The journal “Frontiers in Life Sciences” has no relation to the Human Frontier Science Program.
HFSP was alerted by the scientific community that fraudulent messages were sent again to researchers and research organizations with the aim to solicit manuscript submissions for a fake HFSP run journal by the name of “Frontiers in Life Sciences” (see screen shot of message below). We would like to alert all scientists to the fact that HFSP no longer operates a scientific journal. The message shown below links to a so-called “HFSP Journal” that is a hijacked version of the former HFSP Journal which existed from 2007 to 2010. However, this journal is no longer in production and has since evolved into the journal “Frontiers in Life Science” operated by Taylor & Francis.
Screen shot of the fraudulent message
What alerts you that this is fake?
- The phone number of the HFSP office is incorrect.
- The ISSN number is fictitious. When correct, it is an eight digit number consisting of seven digits plus a check digit which enables a computer to recognize when the number is incorrectly cited. The check digit may be an X, otherwise the ISSN is fully numeric.
- All emails listed in the message do not correspond to any existing accounts of the HFSPO in Strasbourg, France.
The message provides a link to a website that displays a header with our acronym, followed by a falsified ISSN and the full name of our program. The screen shot below shows the current version of this site.
Screen shot of the 2018 version of the fake HFSP website
What alerts you that this is fake?
- One key indicator of the fictitious content is the composition of the so-called editorial board. If you search for some members you will find their names (or variations thereof, change of country) on websites of other fake journals.
- Many, if not all journals, in the sciences will insist on manuscript submission via their proprietary online system and will not ask for a PDF to be sent.
- On their website, the scammers pretend to have a JIF but when you follow the link to the ISI page you receive an error message.
- Fake archival links: the website displays links to the archives of the real HFSP Journal. However, the link leads you to a login page where you are asked to pay USD 650. All back issues of the real HFSP Journal are freely available via the website of its successor journal (“Frontiers in Life Science”) which is an Open Access journal owned by Taylor & Francis (http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/tfls20/current ).
Please do NOT SUBMIT manuscripts to the fake HFSP Journal and most importantly do NOT PAY any money. The fake HFSP Journal uses the following website: www.hfsp-journal.org.
Screen shot of the 2015/2016 version of the fake HFSP journal
