Abstract

Imagine you received a manuscript to review, written by ? you! This article describes the perplexing, then somewhat chilling account of an apparent academic identity theft in which someone was submitting manuscripts for publication ostensibly written by a fictitious author whose name was remarkably similar to my own. Through this story, it becomes clear that the field of academia may be especially vulnerable to several types of fraudulent acts. These events have implications for the manner in which we verify authorship on journal articles, our hiring practices, and our reliance on unverified e-mail correspondence. Academics would be well advised to heed the lessons garnered from this peculiar experience