Funniest spam of the week (an offer of $200,000)

This came in the email yesterday:

From: ** Subject: Journal Purchase Proposal – ECON JOURNAL WATCH Date: April 11, 2025 at 03:47:32 EDT To: gelman@stat.columbia.edu

Respected Editor, ECON JOURNAL WATCH I am Alex, Founding Director of ** Press. We are an international platform with extensive experience in academic journal management.

We would like to propose negotiations for a $200,000 acquisition of your journal, with a commitment to maintaining its reputation and confidentiality. I have attached a proposal presentation with more details and would be glad to address any questions. If you’re interested, we can arrange a Zoom meeting at your convenience to discuss further.

Looking forward to your thoughts.

Best regards, Alex Assistant Editor **

The message also came with a Word document that no way I’m gonna open.

So many funny things about this one, maybe the funniest being that “Alex” is identified both as the “Founding Director” of the press and also as its “Assistant Editor.” The Founding Director should be able to grab a higher title than Assistant, no? Also funny how they have “extensive experience in academic journal management” but they can’t bring themselves to mention any academic journals they actually manage. Vixra, perhaps? Or maybe Psychological Science in its 2010-2015 boom years?

As for the $200,000 . . . doesn’t “Alex” know that scientific citations are worth $100,000 each? Econ Journal Watch is small-time but it’s still gotta be worth more than 2 citations, no?

Here’s my counter-offer, “Alex.” Put $20 million an the table and we can talk. But here’s something to sweeten the offer for you: if I go for the deal, I’ll throw in JASA and JMLR for you too. I don’t have the authority to sell you those journals, but then again I don’t have the authority to sell Econ Journal Watch either. And I was on the editorial board of JASA once.

I’d offer to sell Berkeley Electronic Press, but that won’t work, as it’s already been sold to the highest bidder. I bet Aaron got more than a piddling $200,000 out of the deal. Hell, Alan Krueger got $100,000 to coauthor just one article!

Maybe I should be less amused than insulted by the offer of $200,000 for a single journal.

On the other hand, $200,000 is real money: I could use it to attend 11+ conferences featuring some mixture of active and washed-up business executives, academics, politicians, and hangers-on. Or, more to the point, it’ll buy me 139,130 Jamaican beef patties (I’m rounding down here, cos what can you do with 0.4 of a beef patty).

OK, here’s the deal, “Alex,” if you’re reading this email. Mail me $200–that’s right, not $200 thousand, just $200–in unmarked bills, then I’ll talk with the other people on the Econ Journal Watch editorial board and see if they’re interested in your offer. If it’s a yes, then we have a deal. But the $200 is a nonrefundable deposit, a fair payment for my time. Take it or leave it.

Heck, send me $400 and I’ll pass the offer on to the JASA editorial board as well.

P.S. We laugh, but, yes, these people are evil. They degrade our public online spaces in the same way that muggers degrade public physical spaces.