Phishing Scam Targets Academics

5 May 2009 at 9:09 am Peter G. Klein 8 comments

| Peter Klein |

Some of you may have received a weird email this morning, purportedly from Elsevier, soliciting “manuscripts in all Fields of human Endeavour.” It has the general form of a call for submissions but gets the details wrong, e.g., asking authors to submit all papers to a central address, with Elsevier then deciding which of its subject-area journals is appropriate — a “special publication procedure,” it says — and, craziest of all, promising decisions within one week of submission. It also bears the usual marks of a phishing scam, such as as reply-to address that does not end in “elsevier.com.”

My guess is that naive authors, after being sucked into corresponding with the fake editors, will at some point be asked for credit card information to cover submission fees or page charges. Sadly, our publish-or-perish climate will probably lead some inexperienced scholars to fall for it. Anybody know of similar scams targeting academics?

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8 Comments Add your own

1. REW | 5 May 2009 at 9:34 am

You mean any scams besides telling humanities PhD students that there are jobs after grad school?
2. david | 5 May 2009 at 9:36 am

Grad school?
3. Peter Klein | 5 May 2009 at 9:37 am

One of my favorite cartoons shows a young man, dressed in cap and gown, getting into a taxi. Driver: “I bet you’re pretty excited about graduation. I felt the same way after I got my PhD.”
4. jeremy hunsinger | 5 May 2009 at 9:59 am

There are quite a few publication scams out there, usually tied to conferences in exotic locations. Most of the ones that I see come from groups dealing in technology/computer science, etc. http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/#examples is a good place to start.

other ones are less scams then worrisome, like http://www.bogost.com/blog/writeonly_publication.shtml
5. Art Carden | 5 May 2009 at 10:04 am

But I’ve got several papers forthcoming in their prestigious journals! Are you saying I shouldn’t have given them my credit card numbers, social security number, passport number, driver’s license number, mother’s maiden name, name of my first pet, name of the first school I went to, name of the street I grew up on, and all of my biometric identifiers?
6. Peter Klein | 5 May 2009 at 10:06 am

Art, why publish at all? You already have tenure at several prestigious virtual universities.
7. Cliff Grammich | 5 May 2009 at 7:10 pm

Oh, come on, Peter . . . Is any scam artist dumb enough to believe “inexperienced scholars” (or even experienced ones?!?) have money worth scamming?
8. Peter Klein | 5 May 2009 at 7:49 pm

Cliff, I personally have substantial funds, given to me by the widow of the late finance minister of Nigeria, in exchange for my covering some modest transaction fees. Well, I don’t actually have the money, but she promises me I’ll see it any day now.