What is fake peer review?

January 7, 2016

Dr. Jennifer C van Velkinburgh, Filipodia Publishing

 

Fake peer review is when an author manipulates the reviewer-recommendation option given by peer-reviewed journals. For this fraudulent activity, authors will submit the name of a real scientist as the recommended reviewer, but they will provide false contact information to route the review request to another person who will give them a positive review, supporting publication of the manuscript. This other person can be the authors themselves, a friend/colleague, or a third-party company that sells fake peer review services for a price. Regardless, any person or entity involved in this activity is guilty of committing fraud.

 

 

Filipodia Publishing LLC will not tolerate any behavior associated with fake peer review. We report any information we become aware of related to this fraudulent practice to all involved individuals (i.e. authors, acknowledged affiliates, etc.), affiliated institutions (i.e. the authors’ employing institution(s), the journal’s publishing hospital/university, etc.), entities (i.e. the grant agency supporting the work, the journal’s publisher, etc.), and/or interested agencies (i.e. the Committee on Publication Ethics, retractionwatch.org, etc.).