APC Invoice Triage
Received an article-processing-charge invoice that feels off? Answer a short questionnaire about it. The tool returns a discrepancy register — each answer marked Consistent, Discrepancy, Common fraud pattern or Not answered, with one factual sentence each. It does not decide whether the invoice is genuine or whether you should pay it.
Invoice questionnaire
What this invoice's answers show
Next, regardless of the register above
- Verify the journal's domain independently — search for the journal by name rather than clicking the invoice's link.
- Contact the publisher using the email or contact address listed on the genuine journal website, not the address on the invoice.
- Never pay a journal APC to a personal bank account or by cryptocurrency.
- If anything above looks wrong, report it to your institution's research office or library before paying.
No overall verdict is calculated. A single "Common fraud pattern" answer can be decisive even when every other answer is Consistent. This register does not determine whether the invoice is genuine or whether you should pay it.
Method and limitations
Method version 1.0 · reviewed 20 July 2026. Four of your answers are checked against documented fraud patterns and simple factual comparisons (payment method, acceptance timing, payee-name match, domain match); a fifth, optional comparison checks your quoted amount against a fee OpenAlex records for the journal, if you look one up. Each check reports Consistent, Discrepancy, Common fraud pattern or Not answered with one sentence — never a combined score, percentage or overall verdict.
Not checked: whether the journal itself is legitimate (use the Journal Evidence Checker for that), the invoice's authenticity as a document, or anything about the underlying manuscript. An invoice preceding acceptance is treated as a fraud-pattern signal, but some fully open-access publishers legitimately disclose an upfront submission fee as stated policy — confirm this against the journal's own terms before relying on this signal alone. All answers stay in your browser; only an optional journal name/ISSN (for the APC lookup) is ever sent anywhere, and only to OpenAlex.
How to read this tool
Purpose: Turn questionnaire answers about a received APC invoice into a discrepancy register of documented fraud patterns and factual comparisons.
- Maturity
- Production
- Method version
- 1.0
- Reviewed
- Processing
- Local browser with one optional named third-party request
Evidence basis
- OpenAlexlive public API, used only for the optional amount comparison
Privacy
Questionnaire answers remain in the browser. Only an optional journal name or ISSN is ever sent anywhere, and only to OpenAlex.
Limitations
Each register row is Consistent, Discrepancy, Common fraud pattern or Not answered; no combined score or overall verdict is calculated. An invoice preceding acceptance is a documented fraud-pattern signal but is not decisive for publishers with a disclosed upfront-fee model.
Decision boundary
Does not determine whether the invoice is genuine or whether to pay it.