Chinese authors, beware:

It has recently come to our attention that a predatory group known as the International Association for Applied Science and Technology is operating a fake submission site (https://www.iaast.cn) where authors can submit a manuscript to a variety of journals and/or allow the IAAST to select journals for them based on the manuscript’s subject area.

They claim to be a publishing partner for many international publishing houses, including Wolters Kluwer, Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, and Springer Nature to lure unsuspecting authors to submit their research. Once an author submits, the IAAST will follow up with an e-mail to the authors (sent from “science@iaast.net”) and send them a forged acceptance letter for an existing journal that has no affiliation with their site.

We became aware of this group when an author contacted the Medicine® editorial office to question the legitimacy of an acceptance letter (see example below):

They are targeting authors with the intent of collecting money for an Article Processing Charge (APC). Authors should be aware that only manuscripts submitted to the journal’s official submission system (in this case Editorial Manager) would be under consideration with the journal and would not be accepted without undergoing peer review first, which often takes several weeks, if not months, to complete. Meanwhile, predatory groups will often send acceptance letters within hours or days, which should be a huge red flag to authors.

If accepted, the decision letter would be sent from the system and not directly from the publisher. An invoice for the APC would be sent from the Copyright Clearance Center (copyright.com) and processed through their RightsLink® platform.

When in doubt, authors should contact the corresponding journal’s editorial office and be sure to report any suspicious activity.

Cover image credit: Pexels