It has come to our attention that fraudulent emails are being distributed widely in the scientific community. These spam emails use fake publisher email addresses and attempt to appear as official communications from the publisher.

The fraudulent e-mail messages are generally called "Manuscript Submission" or “Call for Papers” and are typically sent using e-mail accounts supported by Gmail, Hotmail or other free e-mail providers. Typically, the body of these messages contain a "Call for Papers", requesting that authors submit scholarly articles via e-mail for publication by Elsevier in various Elsevier journals and other publications. These fraudulent e-mails involve a request for the victims to send “handling fees” to cover the processing of the article submitted.

Please be assured that Elsevier, Inc. is in no way associated with this fraudulent e-mail campaign. Elsevier is currently investigating this fraud to identify the persons responsible and to bring them to justice. Elsevier does not solicit intellectual property from authors in this fashion, and does not utilize Gmail, Hotmail, or any other free third-party e-mail providers in communications with authors and editors.

If you receive any e-mail messages that appear to be a part of this fraudulent solicitation, DO NOT respond to the message and do not open any attachments contained in the message. Rather, please forward the message to Elsevier's Fraud Department at emailabuse@elsevier.com. We will use the information included in the message to aid in our investigation. If you know of someone who has received this message, please pass along the above information and ask them also to forward the message to the Elsevier's Fraud Department.

Tips on how to recognize fraudulent and/or phishing emails:

WHAT IS PHISHING?

An internet phishing scam uses emails or websites to trick you into providing sensitive personal and financial information that the perpetrator then uses to access your account.

TIPS TO HELP AVOID GETTING HOOKED BY A PHISHING SCAM:

• Be suspicious of emails from people you don’t know.
  
  
• Do not reply to an email or pop-up message that requests personal, financial, or other private information. These messages often appear to be from a legitimate business and ask you to enter sensitive information claiming that there is a “problem” with your account or that your account is in danger of being “deactivated.” Sometimes these messages are sent in bulk, and are not personalized or directly addressed to you. In other cases, they may be directly addressed to you. If you have doubts about whether a message is authentic, find the proper telephone number from a financial statement, credit card or other authentic source (not from the suspect e-mail) and call that number to make an inquiry.
  
  
• Do not call any telephone numbers in an email or pop-up message (or any attachments or links in the message) asking you to call and provide personal, financial, or other private information. Scammers are able to mask their phone numbers so that it is impossible for you to tell where your call is actually being routed.
  
  
• Do not click on a website link in an email or pop-up message that requests personal, financial, or other private information, or enter that information on any site that the link takes you to. Also, don’t paste that link into a new web browser. Scammers often make it seem like the link will take you to one web address when they are actually taking you to a completely different website – one which may infect your computer with a virus, spyware, or other malicious computer programs.
  
  
• Be cautious about opening attachments or downloading files from emails, regardless of who sent them since they can infect your computer with malicious programs.
  
  
• Do not email sensitive personal, financial, or other private information. Email is not a secure method of transmitting personal information.
  
  
• Review your credit card and bank account statements as soon as you get them to check for unauthorized activity.
  
  
• Use anti-virus and anti-spyware software and a firewall to guard against scammers who are trying to access the information on your computer or track your activities on the Internet. Update these security systems regularly.