Inappropriate Use of Submission and Rejection Emails for Advertising Revision Services and Congresses

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Introduction
Emails are an essential part of academics' daily communication, and a core element of personal information management (Whittaker et al. 2006).In the context of academic publishing, it is common for emails that acknowledge the submission of a paper to a journal to include information such as a manuscript number, the handling editor, and the ensuing processes that may follow submission.Emails related to intermediary processes, such as requested or required revisions, would also include peer reviewers' and editorial remarks.Similarly, it is usual for emails that transmit a rejection to authors to not only transmit the rejection decision, but wherever editors act responsibly, to also indicate the reasons for rejection, either soon after submission, as a desk rejection, or following peer review (Teixeira da Silva et al. 2018).These would typically be the most scholarly uses of emails by editors, journals and publishers related to a paper's submission and/or (Independent Researcher, Kagawa-ken, Japan; jaimetex@yahoo.com)Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva

Inappropriate Use of Submission and Rejection Emails for Advertising Revision Services and Congresses
rejection.
Such emails are not considered as unsolicited bulk, unsolicited commercial, or spam email (Teixeira da Silva et al. 2020;Altulaihan et al. 2023) because the recipients (authors) have implicitly or explicitly agreed to receive such communications from journals or their editors as part of the peer review process.Nor are such emails phishing attacks (i.e., false communications from a seemingly verifiable source) because no masqueraded identities are employed (Bhardwaj et al. 2020).Consequently, filtering out such emails or their senders, as would occur to avoid the receipt of spam or to truncate phishing attacks (Dada et al. 2019), makes no sense in the context of peer review because the content of these emails is from trusted sources and contains appropriate (i.e., relevant to the recipient) content.
It is not uncommon for journals to employ artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted software to format text within such emails in order to automate messages to authors, a method that is particularly useful when the volume of submissions to that journal are high.Automation might take on several forms: 1) submission acknowledgement; 2) resubmission reminder; 3) peer review invitation and/or reminder(s); 4) rejection communication.The publishing industry can be considered as a subset of supply chainbased businesses that are adopting more AI-based digital technologies to remain competitive (Hartley & Sawaya 2019), including for aspects such as marketing (Nair & Gupta 2021;Huang & Rust 2022) and email automation (Park et al. 2019).However, what if emails are used beyond specified and understood academic purposes, and are used for more strategic marketing or promotional purposes (Thomas et al. 2022)?In some unique cases, specifically during the COVID-19 pandemic, email management may have been strategized in order to reach remote users (Rysavy et al. 2021).
The objective of this paper, which relies exclusively on a limited number of emails received by the author from journals to which papers had been submitted, is to highlight a topic that has, to the author's knowledge, not yet been debated, but is worthy of wider reflection as well as the establishment of more rigorous guidelines related to editorial and publisher responsibilities.

I. Case Studies of Inappropriate Email Content by COPE Members
In this evidence-based opinion paper, limited evidence is presented, as four cases, in which select Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) member journals and publishers have, in the author's opinion, abused a typically restricted medium of communication with authors, i.e., emails related to submissions, peer review, or rejections, to transmit additional information that is not directly linked to the author or the submitted paper.
These cases are considered to be an abuse because they attempt to either gain additional sideline business, for example, via auxiliary paid services, which would result in financial benefit to the publisher, specifically the advertisement of editing services or conferences.
No formal methodology was employed to identify these emails, i.e., this is this is an anecdotal account undertaken on the basis of a post-factum analysis.Simply, as the author identified "interesting" or unusual cases related to email-based communication strategies by editors, journals or publishers, these were archived, then compiled.While there was no departing research question, the presumed null hypothesis, had there been one, would have been that no impertinent or irrelevant content would be expected in emails from editors or journals related to manuscript submission or rejection.
Case Cancer Institute, which also used the rejection email to advertise two for-profit revision and editing services (appendix, case 2).The journal and publisher are COPE members, but the two English revision services are not.
Case 3 involves a Wiley journal, Plant Biology, which also used the rejection email to advertise a for-profit revision and editing service (Appendix, case 3).A slightly different email was also received by another Wiley title, Journal of Evidence-Based Medicine.The journal and publisher are COPE members, but the English revision service is not.
Case 4 involves an Elsevier journal, Information Processing and Management, which used the submission acknowledgement email to advertise an online conference.Since there were non-refundable fees associated with participation (US$118.80-238.00), the email was essentially a free advertisement for a for-profit online event (Appendix, case 4).This case is even more egregious because an identical advert appeared even in 2023 emails associated with manuscript submission to this journal, i.e., advertising an outdated conference.The journal and publisher are COPE members.

II. Discussion
On page 13 of its Principles of Transparency (PoT) manual, COPE states "there is a transparent business model, and ownership, revenue sources, and advertising policies/ practices are independent of editorial decisions" and "any direct marketing is done ethically" (COPE Council 2022).On page 27, under PoT 15 "Advertising," it is stated that "Advertisements should not be related in any way to editorial decision making," while on the same page, under PoT 16 "Direct marketing," it is stated that "Any direct marketing activities (…) that are conducted on behalf of the journal, shall be appropriate, well targeted, and unobtrusive."These clauses are also interpreted as advertising (especially for for-profit services) should not be permitted in communications (e.g., emails) that are related to editorial decisions.If anything, such adverts, as exemplified by cases 1 -4, within emails related to submission and rejection are not only inappropriate and loosely targeted (i.e., they target authors whose papers are rejected), they are obtrusive.
Academia needs to debate whether it agrees with this form of advertisement and abuse of emails related to the submission and rejection of academic papers for ancillary purposes.The author is of the opinion that such COPE member status quo journals and publishers should not engage in ethically questionable practices, as noted in cases 1 -4, related to such emails.Even more so when several of the organizations whose services they are advertising are not COPE members.This is because a potentially grey zone in ethics is created by mixing COPE (a publishing ethics brand) member services with non-COPE member services.Although this may seem -to those who created it -an innovative business model, i.e., by achieving two objectives within a single communication channel, namely the submission-or rejection-related email, it may be, in the author's opinion, a form of abuse of the trust inherent in such email communications and their actual intended purpose.

III. Conclusion, Limitations and Future Research
To address an increase in the volume of submissions to a journal, as part of its management strategy, it might revert to AI-assisted software to deliver automated messages to authors, either related to the submission, revision or rejection of papers.However, should such automation and customization include undesired and irrelevant content?
Effective journal management should include making sure that such communications are appropriate and do not include content that lies outside of emails' purported purposes.
Importantly, authors should be within their rights to hold editors, journals and publishers accountable whenever "odd" or inappropriate email content is discovered.This paper records four cases of inappropriate content (in the author's opinion) in submission and rejection emails by COPE members (journals and publishers), some of them among the largest in the industry (Nishikawa-Pacher 2022).However, since COPE also represents the commercial interests of its members, and not necessarily the rights of the authors that contribute to its members' academic and/or business models, there is no formal platform -public or otherwise -for authors to represent their concerns about COPE members.
For this reason, academics need to report, in the form of case studies, as was done in this paper, instances of email or service abuse, especially by status quo and COPE member journals and publishers, in order to hold them more accountable.By formally recording such cases, it will be possible to begin to determine which fall into the category of "junk management" status (Teixeira da Silva 2023), and which do not.
1 involves Emerald Publishing Ltd.and the journal Online Information Review, which used a rejection email to advertise services to an English for-profit revision and editing service, Editage.Identical advertising was received in rejection emails from other Emerald Publishing Ltd.journals: Records Management Journal (April 2, 2020); VINE Journal ofInformation and Knowledge Management Systems (April 30, 2020; November   21, 2020); Data Technologies and Applications (September 18, 2020); Equality, Diversity and Inclusion(August 14, 2023).Emerald Publishing Ltd.also used a rejection email to advertise English revision services with Peerwith (Appendix, case 1).While these journals and publisher are COPE members, the English revision services are not.Case 2 involves a Springer Nature journal, namely Journal of the Egyptian National www.springer.com/gb/authors-editors/authorandreviewertutorials/writinginenglish)andourWriting resources (http://www.biomedcentral.com/getpublished/writingresources).These cover common mistakes that occur when writing in English."InformationProcessing and Management, a journal published by Elsevier, ranked as the 3 rd largest publisher (Nishikawa-Pacher 2022), used the submission acknowledgement email to advertise a for-profit conference.Both Elsevier (https://publicationethics.org/ category/publisher/elsevier) and Information Processing and Management (https:// publicationethics.org/members/information-processing-and-management) are COPE members.Submission acknowledgement email date: September 5, 2022.The exact same conference was advertised in an email acknowledgement accompanying the submission of a paper to this journal on April 9, 2023: "Also, you may be interested in the Information Processing & Management Conference 2022 (IP&M2022) occurring 20-23 October 2022 in Xiamen, China.IP&MC 2022 will be a truly interdisciplinary event and will provide excellent opportunities to meet scientific contacts, initiate new collaborations, and push forward innovations in research dissemination.If interested, visit https://www.elsevier.com/events/conferences/information-processing-and-management-conference".