Journals and publishers facing issues from fraudulent sites

This blog is being published in order to highlight the issues journals and publishers are facing from fraudulent/copied/hijacked sites. Wikipedia describes journal hijacking as “the brandjacking of a legitimate academic journal by a malicious third party. Typically, the imposter journal sets up a fraudulent website for the purpose of offering scholars the opportunity to rapidly publish their research online for a fee” (para. 1, 2023).

We hope this post will provide clarity for the journal’s subscribers, readers and authors, and will be useful for other publishers.

The first indication something was amiss came in the form of an email from an author on 17th December 2023, asking why the journal Scopus listing was incorrect – pointing out (correctly) that it was our responsibility as publishers to keep the details up to date. After requesting the listing be amended, we assumed this was a simple error.

Established by Liverpool University Press in 1979, International Development Planning Review (IDPR) is published Open Access under our LUP Open Planning ‘Subscribe to Open’ agreement, meaning that there are no APCs (Article Publishing Charge) for authors. When an author contacted us to enquire how much the journal APC was on 20th December, and supplied the following website as part of our conversation with them – https://idpr.org.uk/index.php/idpr/index – we became concerned.

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