Preventing and protecting against fraud

At ComputingPress we are always alert to the potential for fraudulent or scam behaviour and work hard to ensure that our authors, editors, reviewers and readers do not fall victim to such activity. We have a dedicated team that monitors for fraudulent activity, thoroughly investigates it if found and works to stop any such activity, counteracts any impact and supports any of our authors, editors, reviewers or readers who have been victims of fraud.

Signs that a request is potentially fraudulent or has not come from ComputingPress

While fraud being perpetrated on authors, editors, reviewers or readers of our journals is rare, we have identified that the most common way in which scammers will attempt to defraud researchers is by sending fraudulent emails to request payment for some part of the publishing process. To help protect you in this regard, we can confirm that ComputingPress will:

• Only ever contact you from our journal domain email addresses and Gmail address, see the contact us page. If you receive communications that claim to be from us, or one of our journals, but do not come from any of our email addresses listed, please contact us directly via email.
• Any email requesting payment will always be from the journal domain email address and will always direct you to our manuscript registration system.
• Never request payment of any kind specifically for your article being peer-reviewed.

Please also note that:

• Emails from ComputingPress will only come from the journal domain email addresses and our Gmail email address, see the contact us page.
• Editors will never request payment of article processing charges or any type of fee
• Reviewers will never request payment of article processing charges or any type of fee
• ComputingPress does not link payment of article processing charges to acceptance of a manuscript
• Some scams are sophisticated and may use ComputingPress’s employee names or titles to trick you into thinking that they are authentic communications – in these cases, the email addresses will potentially look similar to ComputingPress address but be very slightly, almost unnoticeably different
• Your institution may also provide institutional guidance on how authors can avoid payment scams
• All article acceptance and publication decisions at ComputingPress journals are based on the outcome of peer review conducted by active researchers and overseen by editors, both of whom are independent from ComputingPress. Article Processing Charges (APCs) covers the costs of turning a manuscript into a finished article, as well as the costs of distributing and promoting an article. APCs are not related to, influenced by, nor influence, editorial decisions. Find out more about about APC here.

Useful Resources

National Cyber Security Centre

https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/collection/phishing-scams

Action Fraud

https://www.actionfraud.police.uk

COPE article on predatory publishing

https://publicationethics.org/resources/discussion-documents/predatory-publishing

Think. Check. Submit

ComputingPress supports the use of Think.Check.Submit. A simple checklist authors can use before submitting research to a journal. Think.Check.Submit. asks the author questions aligned with the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing, a set of criteria used by COPE, DOAJ, OASPA and WAME when assessing journals which apply for membership of their organisations. Many predatory journals and publishers do not fulfil these criteria.