Hi, I also recieved this email today! I do not know what is it?? / BR Wedad

me too.

I received a similar message (slightly different wording) from [email protected] on Jan 2, 2024. I found it suspicious and did not respond.

the only reference to "akisic" that I can find is a YouTube....which simply dispalys the names of four subscribers......darned if I know what it's about!

I received a copy last night. This looks to be similar to a scam mentioined in https://www.researchgate.net/post/Has_anyone_else_received_this_message_Is_it_spam/2 . Some of the posts there describe going to zoom meetings that were suspicious, but noone mentioned this leading to anything.

From: Kaede Okada Date: Sunday, January 7, 2024 at 7:23 AM Subject: Guest Lecture Invitation in 2024

Dear Professor. Aaron Becker

I hope this email finds you well. As a lecture coordinator, I am writing to invite you to deliver a guest lecture to our member universities and institutes across Asia.

Our initiative aims to foster greater intellectual and cultural exchange between students and researchers across the region. We believe that hosting distinguished speakers, like yourself, can promote the sharing of ideas and perspectives.

Our member institutions would greatly benefit from your expertise. A lecture from you, whether delivered remotely or in-person during a visiting fellowship, would be warmly received by audiences at our partners in China, Japan, India, Korea, Thailand and beyond.

Honoraria and travel expenses would be provided for an in-person lecture. For a remote lecture, we offer an honorarium in appreciation of your time and insights. We can collaborate to determine suitable dates, formats, topics and other details.

Please let me know if you would be interested in this opportunity to engage with our pan-Asian academic network. I welcome any questions and look forward to your response regarding a potential guest lecture.

Best regards, Kaede Okada

I received a very similar email from the same person. I reckon a genuine recruiter would introduce their organisation and searching for akisic, this question was the top result. I wasn't going to respond anyway but this settles all remaining doubts.

I received a similar invitation, but it was kind of suspicious. I won't reply anyway.

Dear Professor I hope this email finds you well. As a lecture coordinator, I am writing to invite you to deliver a guest lecture to our member universities and institutes across Asia. Our initiative aims to foster greater intellectual and cultural exchange between students and researchers across the region. We believe that hosting distinguished speakers, like yourself, can promote the sharing of ideas and perspectives. Our member institutions would greatly benefit from your expertise. A lecture from you, whether delivered remotely or in-person during a visiting fellowship, would be warmly received by audiences at our partners in China, Japan, India, Korea, Thailand and beyond. Honoraria and travel expenses would be provided for an in-person lecture. For a remote lecture, we offer an honorarium in appreciation of your time and insights. We can collaborate to determine suitable dates, formats, topics and other details. Please let me know if you would be interested in this opportunity to engage with our pan-Asian academic network. I welcome any questions and look forward to your response regarding a potential guest lecture. Best regards, Ahma Inoue

I wonder what on earth they are hoping to achieve???

Yep, just got one as well. I answered it asking to speak with them face to face on zoom. Let see what happens

I received a very similar message with little different wording. Who are you guys? no link to identity the organization, no introduction, not even proposed dates. Very suspicious. When I googled the name "Pan-Asian Academic Network", I found this page :) Thank you all for sharing.

I received the same thing this morning and reported it to our IT.

I got this request today from [email protected]. Looks like a Scam.

Yes, yesterday. It looks suspicious so I put it in spam.

They've sent me a second of the same!

Today I received email from same.. to deliver few techical lectures to students.

Hmm. it certainly seems like spam; there's no actual follow up with discussions regarding any potential venues, sites or dates.

Thank you Andrea. I received a second "request" with exactly the same wording.....which increases my suspicions about the actual existence of any such organisation! Hey ho!

Too bad that this is a hoax! But I agree, the offer sounds suspicious. I just received the same message, so it seems like this person is making their way around the globe.

I received a similar mail sometime back. I had asked for their website details but the person said that they are developing. I agreed to a zoom call with apparently the director. The very same day the call is scheduled I got the same mail from another person with the same email affiliation. I cancelled the meeting.

I received this very message from [email protected] this morning. Seems very suspicuois. No contact details. I will report this to the IT dept. and will mark it as spam.

Same here. It's a scam.

Pareil pour moi

Received it too. Very suspicious: no info regarding akisik, no particular context about the field of expertise they say one is "an expert". I´d not bother to answer

Got the same mail today. I am now convinced it it spam or maybe phising

A scam

I just received similar email from Daiki Kojima @ akisic.info - I did not respond - But why would this person contact us? What is to be gained?

i received this invitation yesterday. I checked this with my two mature sons who are holding responsible positions overseas. They suspect this to be a scam. I will decline.

This is surely a scam. How to report it? Block the sender.

.I have received a similar mail yesterday and believe like the rest of you that it is scam.

Perhaps we can now put this to bed with the understanding that yes. it's a scam....and poorly thought out, at that!

I received the same invitation and with a wrong name for the second time. I did not reply.

I received a similar e-mail today, introducing himself as "a lecture coordinator dedicated to fostering intellectual exchange and promoting cross- cultural understanding among students and scholars across Asia". No background information on the organization etc.

The most telling of this episode of communications, is that the mob who purports to want our expertise,........has not replied.

I received this email also, I am afraid this person is fake

I am an expert in statistical mechanics and neural networks. This topic is very useful for developing applications and so I think that, if it is not a cheat, the proposal could be interesting.

indeed it sounds suspect, no firm name or whatsoever; something to put aside and not react to

I received this same email from Toshio Arai but with no introduction to the organization. I don't consider it safe to reply to this type of email.

I received the same communication, and I put the name here as I thought they would introduce themselves as a company with a name and physical address.

If nothing else, they have provided us all with a whole new potential network of colleagues/ contacts.....and that may well be a very good thing.

In what areas of research are we all involved? Mine is in art psychotherapy and psychoneuroimmunology (PNI)...and argue against the Newtonian/Cartesian paradigm.

Same here. I've recently received a very similarly structured email from a Seiko Ueno ([email protected].)

I agree; I also suspect that it's a scam. I'm not sure why they want to schedule a virtual meeting so promptly, unless they're thinking of recording it and somehow using it for blackmail (a bit cynical, I know).

However, I did some research on the person claiming to be corresponding with me, and from that profile's (personal) social media accounts, she seems to be an evangelist. So maybe it's an undercover operation for missionary work?

/C

They're all different Christopher..... I guess it's a emote possibility....perhaps phishing more likely?

Thank you Skaiste.

and thank you also Andrea.

I got one today

"Dear Prof. Kevin C Runions

Greetings! I hope this email finds you in great spirits.

I work as a lecture coordinator dedicated to fostering intellectual exchange and promoting cross-cultural understanding among students and scholars across Asia. We are currently seeking distinguished experts like yourself to deliver thought-provoking lectures to our university partners in the region.

Your esteemed background and profound insights make you an ideal candidate to share your knowledge and perspectives with our diverse student audiences. Our network spans prestigious institutions in Japan, South Korea, China, Thailand, India, and various other Asian countries, where your expertise would be greatly appreciated and valued.

We offer flexibility in the delivery format, allowing you to choose between an in-person campus visit or a remote video lecture. Regardless of the mode, we assure you of an honorarium for your valuable contribution. Additionally, our team will provide comprehensive logistical support, ensuring seamless scheduling and technical assistance throughout the process.

This engaging opportunity presents a unique platform to foster meaningful conversations and inspire the next generation of scholars across Asia. We firmly believe that your participation would enrich our mission and leave a lasting impact on our student communities.

I would be delighted to discuss this opportunity further and address any questions or concerns you may have. Please feel free to express your interest and availability at your earliest convenience.

Thank you for your consideration, and I look forward to the potential of collaborating with you on this exciting endeavor.

Best, Kaede Okada"

Similarly, no link to the organization etc. so I take it to be not legitimate.

It's really fascinating how this mob keeps at it! More to the point, who the heck they are.....and what they want? Kaede Okada has a FB page.....devoid of any information, which seems to be a pattern with other signatories to this message. Curioser and curioser.

I have now received the same email. Glad to know it is probably spam.

Dear prof. Fasih Ahmed Khan

Greetings! I hope this email finds you in great spirits.

I work as a lecture coordinator dedicated to fostering intellectual exchange and promoting cross-cultural understanding among students and scholars across Asia. We are currently seeking distinguished experts like yourself to deliver thought-provoking lectures to our university partners in the region.

Your esteemed background and profound insights make you an ideal candidate to share your knowledge and perspectives with our diverse student audiences. Our network spans prestigious institutions in Japan, South Korea, China, Thailand, India, and various other Asian countries, where your expertise would be greatly appreciated and valued.

We offer flexibility in the delivery format, allowing you to choose between an in-person campus visit or a remote video lecture. Regardless of the mode, we assure you of an honorarium for your valuable contribution. Additionally, our team will provide comprehensive logistical support, ensuring seamless scheduling and technical assistance throughout the process.

This engaging opportunity presents a unique platform to foster meaningful conversations and inspire the next generation of scholars across Asia. We firmly believe that your participation would enrich our mission and leave a lasting impact on our student communities.

I would be delighted to discuss this opportunity further and address any questions or concerns you may have. Please feel free to express your interest and availability at your earliest convenience.

Thank you for your consideration, and I look forward to the potential of collaborating with you on this exciting endeavor.

Best,

Daiki Kojima

Oh clever!!! I was wondering how long it would take for one of your mob would join us. Please tell us more about this group and what they purport to offer???

I agree.

It is the same with me, without any address or link. Better not to respond to it.

I got the sme today 18 april:

Dear Prof. Carlos Alejandro Hidalgo-Rasmussen

Greetings! I hope this email finds you in great spirits.

I work as a lecture coordinator dedicated to fostering intellectual exchange and promoting cross-cultural understanding among students and scholars across Asia. We are currently seeking distinguished experts like yourself to deliver thought-provoking lectures to our university partners in the region.

Your esteemed background and profound insights make you an ideal candidate to share your knowledge and perspectives with our diverse student audiences. Our network spans prestigious institutions in Japan, South Korea, China, Thailand, India, and various other Asian countries, where your expertise would be greatly appreciated and valued.

We offer flexibility in the delivery format, allowing you to choose between an in-person campus visit or a remote video lecture. Regardless of the mode, we assure you of an honorarium for your valuable contribution. Additionally, our team will provide comprehensive logistical support, ensuring seamless scheduling and technical assistance throughout the process.

This engaging opportunity presents a unique platform to foster meaningful conversations and inspire the next generation of scholars across Asia. We firmly believe that your participation would enrich our mission and leave a lasting impact on our student communities.

I would be delighted to discuss this opportunity further and address any questions or concerns you may have. Please feel free to express your interest and availability at your earliest convenience.

Thank you for your consideration, and I look forward to the potential of collaborating with you on this exciting endeavor.

Best, Kaede Okada

etc. etc! They give us no actual information on which we can make an informed choice!

I think that it is useless to answer this message. I have looked to the author Kaede Okada. It is one young guy who cannot take any action as this message. I decide to ignore it.

Sounds like numerous scams inviting me to contribute my "brilliant" work to irrelevant journals from editors who obviously know nothing about my work.

One could be tempted to tell them to give up!

I received a similar email from Izumi Yamada. I asked here to tell me more about her institution. This is the response I got:

What a great pleasure to hear from you. We are so happy to share futher information with you.

We work independently as a coordinator representing our friend partners in Asia to organize academic lectures, both webinars and in-person seminars. We feel honored and flattered to invite you to deliver lectures for Asian audience.

To be specific, there will be 3 in-person lectures per tour. Besides excellent honorarium, we will cover all the travel expenses, such as round-trip business airfare, 5-star hotel accommodations, ground transportation (trains or automobiles as needed), and meals/ancillary expenses, etc. We also hold webinars. Each virtual lecture lasts up to 45 minutes. Sometimes, a 25-minute recorded video will do.

We have many cooperative partners, who are also the sponsors of the academic collaboration projects, and most of them are universities, companies and research centers covering various fields, such as West China Hospital in China, Yokohama City University in Japan, Seoul National University in Korea, SUN Pharmaceutical Industries LTD. in India, etc.

It will be our great pleasure if you'd like to share your know-how with a broad audience including PhD and postgraduates, researchers and  professors, on educational and  scientific level to help them to scale up their research attitude.

For more details, is it possible for you to spare 15 minutes to discuss more? Our project will start on next a few months, so we sincerely want to invite you. A video talk will be more direct and clearer to explore further details and share proposals. We would like to share more proposals with you. We would appreciate it if you can consider this discussion.

me too, same email from Daiki Kojima ([email protected])

Same here, I got the email a few days ago from [email protected]. It is very suspicious and I did not reply.

"Greetings! I hope this email finds you in great spirits.

I work as a lecture coordinator dedicated to fostering intellectual exchange and promoting cross-cultural understanding among students and scholars across Asia. We are currently seeking distinguished experts like yourself to deliver thought-provoking lectures to our university partners in the region.

Your esteemed background and profound insights make you an ideal candidate to share your knowledge and perspectives with our diverse student audiences. Our network spans prestigious institutions in Japan, South Korea, China, Thailand, India, and various other Asian countries, where your expertise would be greatly appreciated and valued.

We offer flexibility in the delivery format, allowing you to choose between an in-person campus visit or a remote video lecture. Regardless of the mode, we assure you of an honorarium for your valuable contribution. Additionally, our team will provide comprehensive logistical support, ensuring seamless scheduling and technical assistance throughout the process.

This engaging opportunity presents a unique platform to foster meaningful conversations and inspire the next generation of scholars across Asia. We firmly believe that your participation would enrich our mission and leave a lasting impact on our student communities.

I would be delighted to discuss this opportunity further and address any questions or concerns you may have. Please feel free to express your interest and availability at your earliest convenience.

Thank you for your consideration, and I look forward to the potential of collaborating with you on this exciting endeavor.

Best,

Daiki Kojima"

Received this today from [email protected]:

Greetings! I hope this email finds you in great spirits.

I work as a lecture coordinator dedicated to fostering intellectual exchange and promoting cross-cultural understanding among students and scholars across Asia. We are currently seeking distinguished experts like yourself to deliver thought-provoking lectures to our university partners in the region.

Your esteemed background and profound insights make you an ideal candidate to share your knowledge and perspectives with our diverse student audiences. Our network spans prestigious institutions in Japan, South Korea, China, Thailand, India, and various other Asian countries, where your expertise would be greatly appreciated and valued.

We offer flexibility in the delivery format, allowing you to choose between an in-person campus visit or a remote video lecture. Regardless of the mode, we assure you of an honorarium for your valuable contribution. Additionally, our team will provide comprehensive logistical support, ensuring seamless scheduling and technical assistance throughout the process.

This engaging opportunity presents a unique platform to foster meaningful conversations and inspire the next generation of scholars across Asia. We firmly believe that your participation would enrich our mission and leave a lasting impact on our student communities.

I would be delighted to discuss this opportunity further and address any questions or concerns you may have. Please feel free to express your interest and availability at your earliest convenience.

Thank you for your consideration, and I look forward to the potential of collaborating with you on this exciting endeavor.

Best, Kaede Okada

We've all received the same guff; even one of the posts here, with never any explanation. Shall we put it to bed?

Fariha Kanwal

I have received a similar message today but from a different person named Ahmad Inoue. This is clearly a scam. A tell tale sign that it is a scam is that the email address is not a proper institutional email address:@ info. Also, there is no information about the institution itself that organises the lectures nor information about the universities. I reported this email as phishing and I recommend to all colleagues that receive similar emails to report them as phishing or spam and not to engage with the scammers. Reporting as spam or phishing will help to filter out these kind of emails and may help to prevent a colleague in the future to fall prey to this type of scam. The objective of the scam most likely is to ask for money from us with the excuse that we need to pay for fees related to lectures, travel etc. in a similar vein to what predatory journals do (ask for fees for publication) and or to obtain personal information that enables access to money.

All the best

I agree to your proposal of me doing with a talk At your conference. But I would like your should expand the knowledge about what is the conference. What are the topics of your conference.

Yes, we've all received the same email......it's rubbish!

Received this email today:- The suspicious thing is that there is no mention of theme/subject/topic etc. It is a generic email which is being sent to scam people.

I trust this email finds you in excellent spirits.

I am reaching out to you as a coordinator dedicated to fostering intellectual dialogue and advancing cross-cultural appreciation among students and scholars across Asia. We are currently extending invitations to esteemed experts such as yourself to deliver captivating lectures to our university partners in the region.

Your distinguished background and profound insights make you an exceptional candidate to impart your knowledge to our diverse student audiences. Our network encompasses esteemed institutions in Japan, South Korea, China, Thailand, India, and numerous other Asian countries, where your expertise would be warmly welcomed.

You have the option to deliver your lecture either in person or remotely via video. Regardless of your preference, rest assured that you will be compensated for your valuable contribution, and our team will provide comprehensive logistical assistance to ensure a seamless experience.

This opportunity serves as a distinctive platform to interact with students and ignite the enthusiasm of future scholars across Asia. It would be a privilege to have you join us, and we are confident that your involvement would significantly enrich our program.

I would be thrilled to discuss further details and address any inquiries or uncertainties you may have. Please do not hesitate to let me know if you are interested and available to participate.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely, Kaede Okada

We've all received the same blarney; and suggest that you disregard it.

I hope that this helps.

If you do answer - you get invited to make a 40 min presentation on any topic for $2000 plus $2000 more when they list you as "Honorary Professor" and $6000 plus expenses if you fly over there.

Does not sound legitimate . Especially -- the bit about a) present on anything and b) $2000 to list you as one of their "honorary" professors.

oh and AFTER offering all of that - they ask for a CV.

If it IS legitimate - it looks like they area trying to puff their reputation.

Best

G