Recently there have been cases of students being contacted by GlobeEdit Publishing, a predatory publisher that wants to publish the students work, the initial contact could could look something like this:
“I believe this particular topic could be of interest to a wider audience and we would be glad to consider publishing it.
Should the commercialisation of your work as printed book meet your interest, I will be glad to provide you with further details in an electronic brochure.”
Usualy predatory publishers are interested in you paying the publication cost to make profit off your research. In this case GlobeEdit is offering to publish your work for free, the problem is with the contract; you will loose all rights to your work and they will sell it to make money. GlobeEdit do not care about scientific quality or making your work reach a “wider audience”; they will rather work to limit the access behind a paywall. The student thesis are usually already published and available online through the university repositories.
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) is also reporting similar cases.
Always be wary of:
“– Mass emails asking for submissions”. And to quote SLU:
“That students and researchers are being contacted like this is unfortunately a more and more common phenomenon. Be observant and make sure you know who you are dealing with before you sign anything.”
/Thomas Nyström