Editorial Snapshot: Rising threat of impersonation in academic publishing
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- Published: 2026/01/21
A troubling wave of identity theft has emerged in scholarly publishing, with fraudsters are creating fake email addresses to impersonate established researchers and submit fraudulent manuscripts to journals and conferences. These submissions often feature plagiarized content, AI-generated figures, or fabricated data, bypassing standard institutional verification channels. In several documented cases, low-quality papers have been accepted and published before detection, forcing retractions that leave permanent marks on the scholarly record.