The impostor.
Archives des sciences is a reputable journal that has been hijacked online. There are two websites for the journal, a real one and an impostor one that is run by criminals.
The real journal is published by the Société de Physique et d’Histoire Naturelle (SPHN).
The authentic journal website is located here: http://www.unige.ch/sphn/Publications/Archives.html
The impostor journal website is located here: http://www.archiveofscience.com/
If you search the journal by title on Google, unfortunately the impostor site is the first to appear. Until recently, the authentic journal had little online presence. The impostor site has hijacked the authentic journal’s ISSN and impact factor. It uses what appears to be a correct street address, but because it conducts most transactions online, the physical address is unimportant.
The authentic one.
This hijacking of a respected scholarly journal is an affront to scholarly communication. The authentic journal is now warning people (in French and English) about the fraud. The English version says,
The website http://archiveofscience.com (or http://www.archiveofscience.com/, or also http://sciencesarchive.com or http://www.sciencesarchive.com; changing with time) IS NOT the official website of the journal Archives des Sciences published by the SPHN.
This website criminally usurps the identity of the official journal, using fraudulent means (false editorial board, false addresses, false publication requirements, etc.) in order to encourage scientists to publish articles through finalcial [sic] contribution.
The SPHN is not liable for any offense undergone by potential authors who would have submitted and published scientific articles via the website mentioned above.
The SPHN did not know about this issue until a few weeks after I wrote about it in early September of this year. Later, the offending website was blocked from the Internet in Switzerland, leading the society to falsely conclude the problem had disappeared. Meanwhile, some legal action taken in the U.S. has forced the impostors to include text on their website stating that they are not part of the real journal, yet the bogus website continues to steal the original journal’s identity.
If anybody knows how to shut down a corrupt website, please take or recommend action on this as soon as possible.
