India, June 17 -- Samuel Westwood was building a fence gate from discarded pallet wood when the first email arrived. The psychologist from King's College London had spent his weekend on this modest carpentry project, and apart from a few wonky shelves he'd built over the years, it represented the entirety of his engineering expertise. So, when a stranger wrote asking if he was really the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Engineering and Technology Management, Westwood assumed it was spam.

Then came another email. And another.

"I found out about a week ago that I am the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Engineering and Technology Management," Westwood would later write on his blog in bewilderment. "This is not normally how you find out y...