Email Blacklist

Unsolicited (semi)automatically generated email is a plague. If you have sent me an email but have not received an answer yet, please check this page first. If you belong to the list of biggest offenders below, just don't expect an answer.

Here is my personal blacklist of biggest offenders. Emails originating from these addresses/domains will be deleted unread.

prof-l-request@math.uni-bonn.de

(Ups) Jemand findet es anscheinend höchst originell, immer wieder meine Löschung von der Professoren-Mailingliste zu beantragen. Ich kann Sie dahingehend beruhigen, dass das einerseits zu meiner nicht sehr fernen Pensionierung sowieso automatisch passieren wird. Andererseits ist der Versuch zum jetzigen Zeitpunkt weder originell noch zielführend; denn selbstverständlich gibt es vor der tatsächlichen Löschung eine Sicherheitsabfrage.

editorialmanager.com

Used by most publishers to solicit referee reports. The system sends out (semi)automatically generated emails and harasses potential referees with regular reminders. If you try to discuss this with the assistant of the editor you regularly get useless answers of the kind that the automatic reminders cannot be turned off, editors themselves are often unavailable and hide behind their overstrained assistants. As long as publishers treat potential referees (a job done by volunteers without pay) in this way one should not be surprised that the quality of the refereeing system is steadily declining.

My request to send refereeing requests in a personal email have been constantly ignored by the editors of Advances in Math, Journal of Functional Analysis, International Journal of Mathematics, Journal of Geometric Analysis, Research in the Mathematical Sciences, Iranian Journal of Science and Technology, Transactions A: Science.

Also editors mostly don't even bother to give the referee a feedback; I do not consider an automatically generated generic thank you a feedback. Almost never is the referee informed about the outcome of the decision. Most recently, I had such an experience with Michael Collver from Advances of Math who did not even bother to acknowledge receipt of my report and also ignored a follow up enquiry of mine.

Most recently, Springer Journals like Banach Journal of Mathematical Analysis or Complex Analysis and Operator Theory send out reminders every 2-3 days. I consider such behavior as Harassment. The editors themselves do not react to requests to stop sending out automatic reminders.

mdpi.com

Open access publisher based in Basel, Switzerland who sends out mass mails regularly.

zpzheng@foxmail.com

Zhen Ping Zheng seems to have discovered something great about the Dirac delta function and submitted this to the Annals. Seemingly he seeks to share his fruitless discussion with the Annals editors with the whole world.

HST-STW@gmx.de

HST Studentenwohnheime UG (haftungsbeschränkt) & Co. KG is a one person (Stefan Tafti) incorporation (in Germany you need 1 Euro equity plus a few hundreds of notary fees to incorporate such a thing). They seem to have found something great about the empty space and matter and share their views regularly by email. Apparently there is no interest in a scientific discussion. I even tried to invite them for a talk, but instead of an answer there was more spam.

Further Remarks

The blacklist is in fact much longer, but the rest concerns mostly advertising noise.