And now, it’s author names on research papers being spoofed. Eric Topol, MD, the noted physician, cardiologist, health tech maven, and director/founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, just experienced Grand Theft Auto on his identity. He was listed as the lead author of a paper entitled “Implementation Science for AI Integration in Digital Health Systems”, along with five other author/contributors. It was published in the “Journal of Digital Health Implementation” by Ellinger Publishing Media on 29 March.
Except, as Dr. Topol wrote in a post on his Substack blog, “Ground Truths“, he never wrote it.
From his post along with a screenshot of the ‘paper’ and a link:
“This is a FRAUDULENT paper, AI-generated. My name was used as an author and I had nothing to do with it, never saw it until today
The “Editors” Angelo Rossi Mori, David Mensah, and Zarnie Khadjesari and this “Journal” should be reported.”
Substack readers are often commenters, and your Editor is no exception. So she did some digging and commented on Dr. Topol’s post [Editor’s further notes in brackets]:
Dr. Topol, the link on your post [he provided a link to the publication] is not only going nowhere (to blank screen/’this site can’t be reached”), but also trying to reach the e-PubMed.co.uk site by entering it directly goes to the same screen. When I searched under Ellinger Publishing in Google and the same URL came to the top under them [see screenshot right below], the link equally does not work. The UK E-PubMed Central is now Europe PMC concentrating on UK/EU research and partners with the US NIH PubMed site on certain papers, from what I have read online.
Gemini came up with this about Ellinger: “Ellinger Publishing Media: An independent academic publisher specializing in open-access journals, specifically focusing on artificial intelligence, medicine, social sciences, and interdisciplinary research.” Again, links in the AI summary to e-pubmed.co.uk do not work. My conclusion is that this is a total spoof/hack using a URL similar to the former UK E-PubMed and this Ellinger Publishing is a fraud. I don’t know how you picked it up but it’s no longer reachable.
But, as they say on direct response TV…there’s more. I replied to my own comment, “The paper has a link [that goes to another website], Zenodo. It says clearly that it has been withdrawn from there too. Reason for removal—copyright infringement.”
So what happened? Its withdrawal is as mysterious as its appearance.
At this point, we can draw only certain conclusions.
When research papers, apparently AI-generated, are being fraudulently posted with names as prominent as Dr. Eric Topol’s plus five other authors (who may or may not be real–have not checked), for content that is clearly academic-appearing (apparently a meta-analysis), anyone who publishes or has a public persona is in trouble. Big trouble. And with little defense against this happening.
But even worse, unless the Ellinger Publishing Media site itself has been hacked, this may well be a fraudulent publisher claiming open access journal status.
- My prompt on Gemini, FWIW, indicates that Ellinger Publishing is a ‘vanity press’ for books, not a journal publisher; read for yourself here.
- The journal is fake as well. A search on Google on the name gives you a link to a website called Conference.Researchbib.com, but when you click on the link for the journal, it goes to the same E-PubMed UK ‘this site can’t be reached’ URL as above.
Open access journals per se are controversial enough since they exist to publish non-peer reviewed materials. For studies in progress, this is valid as a platform for further discussion and research. But it doesn’t and cannot carry the weight, the rigor of peer review. We all know that less than rigorous studies used by less than scrupulous companies have leveraged open access journals for sales/survival proof purposes.
Fraudulent open access journals on mysterious websites that spoof the names of once-authentic journal websites just take it one step further.
This Editor invites Readers to give their perspective on this matter.
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