A journal email is genuine if it concerns a manuscript you submitted, or invites you to review a named paper, comes from the journal's domain, reached by typing the address yourself, and asks for no money before a decision. Legitimate publisher email covers acknowledgements, review invitations, decisions, proofs, waiver and metadata correspondence, post-acceptance invoices and corrections. Verify anything else.
Is this journal email genuine? The inventory below answers it: what we send, what we never send, and three checks.
Editorial correspondence is email about a manuscript you actually sent
Editorial correspondence is email about a specific manuscript, from the office handling it, at a stage that manuscript has actually reached. A genuine one can quote your title and that stage. A fraudulent one cannot, because it was written before the sender knew who you were.
Directive Publications takes submissions by email to the editorial office. There is no submission portal and no author account, so any message telling you to log in or upload a file in our name is false. Submit a Manuscript sets out how submission works.
The complete list of emails we send an author
Every message below concerns a manuscript already with the editorial office, or a paper you are asked to referee.
| When it arrives | What it asks for | What it never asks for | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Submission acknowledgement | After you email a manuscript in | Confirms receipt; may chase a missing file | Payment |
| Initial editorial check outcome | Before peer review begins | Says the paper is going to review, or is returned | A fee to reach review |
| Invitation to review a named manuscript | When you are asked to referee | Yes or no by a date, plus conflicts to declare | Money, or a trade for your own work |
| Reviewer comments and revision request | After review | A revised file and a point-by-point response | Payment for a better outcome |
| Decision notice | When the handling editor has decided | Nothing, unless the decision is revise | A fee attached to the decision |
| Acceptance notice | Only after formal acceptance | Sets out the charge, and any waiver already agreed | Anything before acceptance |
| Invoice | After acceptance, or a waiver decision | Payment to the organisation named on the invoice | An account, wallet or app in an individual's name |
| Waiver correspondence | After you request a waiver | Confirmation of the grounds you gave | Anything touching the editorial evaluation |
| Query about your article metadata | Between acceptance and publication | Confirmation of names, affiliations and any ORCID iDs for the Crossref record | Bank details or a password |
| Proof and author queries | Before publication | That you check the typeset article and answer queries | A fee to release the proof |
| Publication notice | On publication | Nothing; it carries the DOI and the link | A charge to make it open |
| Appeal acknowledgement | After you appeal a decision | Confirms the appeal reached the Editor-in-Chief | A fee to be heard |
| Correction correspondence | When a correction or concern is raised | Your response to a specific factual point | Payment to correct or remove the record |
The emails we never send, and why each pattern signals a problem
These are categories of message, not judgements about a sender. An email claiming to be from Directive Publications that matches a row below is not from us.
| Pattern | Why it signals a problem |
|---|---|
| Unsolicited mass invitation praising work it never names | Editorial contact starts from a manuscript; praise that names no title predates any knowledge of you |
| A promise of acceptance, or publication within so many days | Nobody can promise the outcome of a review that has not happened |
| Any demand for money before a decision | Submission is free and the charge arises on acceptance; an earlier fee buys something else |
| Payment to an account, wallet or app in an individual's name | Publisher invoices name an organisation; a personal destination separates money from obligation |
| An offer to fast-track for an extra fee | The fee, not the science, becomes what moves a manuscript |
| Pressure to submit within days for a closing special issue | Deadline pressure exists to stop you checking; a real call survives scrutiny |
| A board seat or reviewer role offered for a submission or a payment | Membership traded for manuscripts is recruitment, not appointment |
| An impact factor, ranking, or PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science or DOAJ claim in our name | We publish no impact factor and hold none of those listings, so the sender is not us |
| An instruction to log in, reset a password or upload to an author portal | There is no portal; a login page in our name harvests credentials |
| A request to send your manuscript somewhere other than the contact page address | Redirecting submissions is how a clone collects work meant for the journal |
| A reply-to on free webmail while the sender name shows a journal | The display name is decoration; the address receiving your reply is what matters |
| A demand for payment to withdraw or take down an article | Corrections belong to the record, not to a price list |
Is this journal email genuine? Three checks that settle it
Run them in order.
Check 1: read the address, not the display name
Read what sits after the @ sign, then the Reply-To separately, because the two can differ. Compare both with the domain of the journal website you reached by typing the address yourself, never by following a link in the email. Look for near-misses: a hyphen inserted, a letter doubled, .org swapped for .info, the journal's name inside someone else's domain. Mail can pass every authentication check and still come from a lookalike domain.
Check 2: ask whether the email knows anything about you
A genuine editorial email names a title and a stage you have reached, so you can test it against your own record. If you never submitted to that journal, no legitimate reason exists for it to write about acceptance or charges. A review invitation is the one unsolicited exception, and a real one names the manuscript, gives a date and asks nothing but yes or no.
Check 3: verify out of band, through sources the sender does not control
Do not use the email to check the email: not its links, its number, its reply address. Type the journal domain in fresh, use the address on its contact page and ask whether the message was sent. Look up its DOI prefix at Crossref to see which organisation owns it. Find any named editor through ORCID and check the affiliation on their record, then write to them at an address their institution publishes, since ORCID records seldom show an email. Search any claimed directory yourself rather than trusting a logo in a signature.
Send this reply to verify the sender
Send it to the address on the journal's contact page, not the one that wrote to you.
Subject: Confirming an email received from your journal
Dear Editorial Office,
On [date] I received an email from [address exactly as it appears], signed [name as given], concerning [subject or claim]. I am writing to the address on your contact page to confirm whether it came from your office.
If it did, please confirm the manuscript title and its current stage. If it did not, I will disregard it and report it as impersonation. I have not replied to it.
Yours sincerely,
[Name, affiliation, ORCID iD]
What we do not publish, and what that means for you
One gap, stated plainly: Directive Publications publishes no register of the addresses its editorial offices send from, and no email-authentication policy page. Until it does, the journal's own contact page, reached by typing the domain yourself, is the reference point.
The tables set a boundary you can hold us to. Submission is free. The article processing charge falls due only on acceptance after peer review; if a manuscript is rejected, nothing is owed. Waivers are requested at or before submission and decided administratively, separately from the editorial evaluation. We publish no impact factor and are not listed in PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science or DOAJ, so an email claiming those in our name is fake. Our editorial policies align with the COPE Core Practices.
What to do if you have already replied to a suspect email
Replying is not a disaster; the steps are ordinary.
- If you paid, tell your bank straight away, because the chance of stopping or recovering a payment falls once the money has been moved on.
- Change any password you entered.
- Keep the message with its headers intact and send it on as an attachment; a plain forward does not carry them.
- Tell the real journal its name is in use.
- If you sent a manuscript, withdraw it in writing, keep a copy and ask for the file to be deleted; do not wait on a reply from an unverified sender before submitting elsewhere.
The policies behind the tables are published in full: Publication Charges and Fee Waivers & Discounts. For the wider judgement: How to Identify a Predatory Journal, Impact Factor, CiteScore and h-index and The Corresponding Author's Responsibilities.