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My name is listed on the editorial board of a journal on Beall's list against my will. I emailed them multiple times to ask them to remove my name from their website. They did not reply. How do I deal with this?

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    This isn't an answer, but if you have a personal website, consider having an explicit line stating this. If you don't have a personal website -- considering building one for this reason (among the many other benefits it provides).
    – tonysdg
    Jul 21, 2017 at 2:36
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    You can also sue the journal for defamation.
    – user9646
    Jul 21, 2017 at 9:01
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    Have a chat with the legal office of your university.
    – Federico Poloni
    Jul 21, 2017 at 13:52
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    @NajibIdrissi Usually the address and the owner information of the scammy journal is false. In that case, how could one progress?
    – Coder
    Jul 21, 2017 at 18:30
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    @Coder The website is hosted somewhere, someone had to pay for the DNS etc. Listing fake contact info isn't the holy grail of avoiding legal consequences. The legal fees will perhaps be big, but as Federico Poloni mentions your university could be interested in this too.
    – user9646
    Jul 22, 2017 at 7:02

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The best way to deal with this is to get legal help. Keep a copy of all your communications (email, etc.) with the journal, bring it to a lawyer and state your issue. Legal help can be expensive, but if you're seriously concerned about being listed and consider a high priority to get off the website, then I advise you to seek quality legal help as soon as possible.

In the mean time, you can also make a note on your personal website/blog/social media/profiles/wherever people access you and your work that you are not an editor of that journal.

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  • For legal assistance on a professional issue such as this, would one expect to be able to use grant money or get support from one’s institution, or would one typically have to pay for it out of pocket?
    – PLL
    Jul 29, 2017 at 7:19
  • @PLL It really kind of depends on the situation/your institution. I would definitely try to get institutional help first, because the nature of the situation is one that could not just affect your reputation, but potentially the reputation of the institution you're associated with. I would make a case to the institution about how damaging you think this could be, and ask them for assistance with legal fees/the ability to utilize their legal resources (if applicable). Whether or not you actually get help from them depends on how closely you're connected to the institution...
    – Abigail Fox
    Jul 29, 2017 at 21:19
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    ...how much money they have available for causes like this, and what their policies are in these situations (it's really case by case). It probably would not be acceptable to use grant money for this, because grant money is typically directed to a specific project/topic, and while this issue is clearly a professional issue, it's also personal to you and only tangentially related to your actual research that the grant money is intended (most likely) to fund.
    – Abigail Fox
    Jul 29, 2017 at 21:21

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