Fwd: continued use of affiliation with RI

[Paola Di Maio]

There is at least one scholar, not on this G group afaik unless using pseudonym, who is continuing to publish papers with RI affiliation a

s Montclair throughout 24 and 25

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2025&q=ronin+institute&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5

This could be related to funding (incoming other financing and other salaries) in that period? *following Keith s email update on tax forms etc

So maybe money going in and money going out  as  other salaries could be related to projects/papers/publications

Just noting some facts, with no imputed implication to the fact

PDM

[Paola Di Maio]

Possible source of latest funding to RI in 2024/25 if someone is interested to verify some more facts?

Source

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0316930

Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University Researchers Supporting Project number (PNURSP2025R343), Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The authors extend their appreciation to the Deanship of Scientific Research at Northern Border University, Arar, KSA for funding this research work through the project number “NBU-FFR-2025-1092-03.”

On Sat, Mar 29, 2025 at 10:25 AM Paola Di Maio <paola....@gmail.com> wrote:

 There is at least one scholar, not on this G group who is continuing to publish papers with RI affiliation a

s Montclair throughout 24 and 25

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2025&q=ronin+institute&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5

This could be related to funding in that period? *following Keith s update on tax forms etc

[Keith Tse]

As Ronin Institute is a virtual organisation, its actual physical location, which is sometimes required in publications, is irrelevant as we do not have one unless one counts Jon Wilkins' previous residence in Montclair, NJ where he used to receive all kinds of mail in relation to Ronin. I believe that we are generally lax for our members to use whatever address they want, and at IGDORE members use their own physical location in their publications even if they use IGDORE as their affiliation. I have therefore seen IGDORE being 'located' all around the world from Pakistan to Middlesborough (UK), which may be baffling to those trying to figure out where IGDORE is on the world map. We had a discussion about this on Slack (which is unfortunately archived and its precious content may be inaccessible to us unless we do something about it) and I argued that the same policy be applied to us at Ronin where we could use any place in the world as the physical location of the Ronin Institute which, as we all know, only exists online. On a lighter note, it is always amusing to make others chase ghosts i.e. something that does not exist in real life, if they ever try to find us on the world map.  

Best, 
Keith 

[Keith Tse]

Akshat Gaurav, one of most prolific authors and faithful in terms of using Ronin Institute as his affiliation, is not funded by Ronin, as far as I know. He uses Montclair, NJ as a matter of formality, I think, which, as explained, is fine since Ronin Institute does not actually exist in real life unless one uses Jon's old home and letterbox (which may not exist anymore if John has relocated). 

Best, 

Keith 

On Saturday, 29 March 2025 at 02:54:34 UTC Paola Di Maio wrote:

[Paola Di Maio]

Thank you Keith

 we cannot make assumptions either way

Ronin Scholars who have been shocked by the unfolding of events in the last two years may want to be cautious about using affiliation

with an institute that has been effectively pirated and associated with possible  blatant unlawfulness *on many counts-

Anyone interested in finding out whether RI has received funding in the last couple of years can follow this simple method:

- search for  published papers using RI affiliation

- contact the funders of the projects requesting more info

Note that 

a) not all funding results in pubications . some research/project work may be done under the radar 

b) some countries and private funders may not have a policy of disclosure *they may not have to reply to enquiries

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[Ruth Duerr]

OK, I confess that a couple of those papers have my name with my Ronin affiliation on them.  Why?  Well, as I started the work way back before all this garbage and I didn’t have another affiliation to use.  I didn’t give an address for the Nature Communications paper arguing that it was stupid for a journal to request one when the organization was virtual and all communications with authors and the journal was on-line!  That argument apparently worked as the paper was published.

Thinking about it, it is even more stupid because usually these days people move from organization to organization every few years, especially when they are young and trying to make a name for themselves.  So whatever address is used by the journal is almost guaranteed to be useless a few years later.  That’s one of the reasons why ORCID’s are much better identifiers for human beings...

Ruth

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[Paola Di Maio]

Thank you Ruth, and congratulations on your publications

while as you say it may be not a good idea to use the old address

my concern is with the financial side  *and not, there is nothing wrong in receiving funding for one's research

The question for me is

where is the money coming from *the money in the accounts for the last couple of years  and who has taken it out

under what entitlement/job function?

In particular I would hope that anyone on this list who has received money from RI in the last two years

or has knowledge of  others doing so or other info about the origin and destination of financial flows, would make disclosure

This is for two reasons

-  undisclosed/unjustified financial gains may have contributed to the erosion of the integrity of the Institute *as we knew it and to the abuses that followed

- to make sure people we nominate as our future representative have not been involved in such dealings, either by being the beneficiary

of monetary flows and/or  by covering up unwarranted movements/financial gains of other scholars

PDM

[Tom Lawrence]

I’m also continuing to use a Ronin affiliation. The organisation still exists as a virtual one as it always has, even if it’s no longer registered with any US authorities. I’ve recently updated an article I have on Preprints.org and kept the affiliation on the new version, but have removed the address from it. We haven’t been registered at Montclair for a while (a few years, IIRC), so I couldn’t see the sense in continuing to use the address on this article – especially given that it’s just an update to a preprint they already had online, so I can’t see anyone really caring if there’s a postal address there anyway.

 

Tom

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[alain tam]

Hi Tom,

We are looking to see whether we can set up a PO Box or use our process agent’s address as a mailing address. 

-Allan

Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 31, 2025, at 4:11 PM, Tom Lawrence <t...@warpedandbroken.com> wrote:



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[Tom Lawrence]

Hi Allan

 

That’s good to know. I don’t need it at present, but could be helpful for future journal submissions.

 

Regards

 

Tom

[Keith Tse]

Jon once told me that he used to receive all kinds of mail on behalf of fellow Ronin Scholars, most of which was at best duplicates of what our members would have received digitally and at worst spam promotional materials. We did also have a letterbox situated in a different state which our legal action team discovered was the formal host to our formal and legal correspondence. I am sure that it is defunct now, just like our old institute (that is somehow still making revenue in the fiscal year ending 2025), but I think it may be required to have a letterbox formally registered somewhere once RIIS is formally set up as a 501(c)3 or not. It may have to be monitored by someone close by. 

Best, 

Keith