WARNING: Avantipub.com

**UPDATE November 2020: this post is about a email scam where the sender pretended to be from “Avantipub.com”, a non-existent website.**

Two members of the research community have brought to our attention a series of scam emails which have been sent out to researchers and authors, inviting recipients to submit their articles to DOAJ. The sender of the email is martin@avantipub.com, apparently a Professor Martin at the ‘University of California, Berkeley’.

The body of the email reads:

‘Dear xxx,

Please check our latest article in DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals).
Integrin Linked Kinase is Necessary for Medial Edge Epithelia Transformation During Palatal Fusion.

If you wish to publish your article absolutely free with out any cost in DOAJ then feel free to contact us.

We look forward to your positive response.

Regards,

Prof. Martin (D.B) , MD., Ph. D.
University of California, Berkeley
USA
Tel: +1-734-800-6319
Email: martin@avantipub.com’

Please be aware that these emails are NOT from DOAJ and neither are they sanctioned by DOAJ. DOAJ has not provided email addresses to Avantipub. (We have no record of either of the email addresses of the two researchers who contacted us.) DOAJ does not publish any original content and only indexes article abstracts. DOAJ does not send out marketing emails. The article mentioned is not, and never has been, indexed in DOAJ.

For those that are interested, you can read more about Avantipub at Scam Advisor: https://www.scamadviser.com/check-website/avantipub.com

If you have received such an email, then do let us know by leaving a comment here or by contacting us at feedback@doaj.org.