Dear academia! I recently received an email asking me to sell coauthorships on my upcoming papers to "get some profit" @AcademicChatter @RetractionWatch @UBVU (thread) (1/8)

Let's ignore the typical flattery of such predatory spam emails and focus on what academia has become. If the goal is to publish more papers, researchers (even bad ones) will find a way to publish them! (2/8)

This is not an isolated phenomena. The same company claims to have sold more than 10 thousand coauthorships this way (and I'm sure they're not the only one offering this "service" to society) (3/8) https://retractionwatch.com/2019/07/18/exclusive-russian-site-says-it-has-brokered-authorships-for-more-than-10000-researchers/

What is particularly worrying, the researcher "ready" to be my coauthors are all from Eastern Europe/Asia. This will lead to less trust in papers published by researchers from such countries and irreversible damage to the reputation of publications involving them (4/8)

We just finished a project with Kazakhstani partners, will other scientists really think that they actually contributed to a potential paper? And I am a coauthor on two papers with a hard working and extremely dedicated researcher from Iran. Will his work be appreciated? (5/8)

While I could be flattered to be recognized as a "leading figure in my field" to whom people pay for coauthorships, I cannot shake off the feeling that they targeted me because I also come from an eastern/southern country...(6/8)

(with a supposedly more relaxed view on morals, corruption and scientific integrity, as none of my other colleagues received such an email) (7/8)

For future reference, if you want to be my coauthor, invite me to join your research project consortia. Actually working on environmental issues in these wonderful countries would be a pleasure! (and I am a great team player) (8/8)