One by-product of the ridiculous model of scientific publishing that we are currently held to is the emergence of predatory publishers. Predatory publishers are organisations who create "fake" scientific journals with the goal of publishing articles from real scientists, in order to claim publication fees. The difference between these journals and "real" journals is that there is next to no peer review involved, and the journals will publish almost anything as long as someone is willing to pay the fees (although some "real" journals are not that different).
Of course since these journals are just made up, they tend to advertise themselves directly to scientists, sending professional looking emails inviting you to submit an article to one of their upcoming emails. In attempt to avoid looking like spam they have bots which find your recent publications, and they work these into their automated emails to grab your attention. Over the years I have had a few ridiculous invitations to submit papers in completely irrelevant journals, such as my offer to join the editorial board of the American Journal of Traffic Engineering. But I got a new offer this week that sparked my interest.
The "editor" wrote me asking:
"I wonder if you could submit a short review or a short commentary (or any type of article) based on your previous article “Author Correction: Spike bursting in a dragonfly target-detecting neuron”."
This was a very brief correction to fix a typo in the reference section of a recent paper of mine. I decided to respond to their offer by asking the editor for clarification on which part of our reference typo correction I should focus my article on, in order to make sure my article was enticing to their journals readership.
Curious to see how far this fake editor will go to get their hands on this exciting and impactful article.