I recently came across the European Journal of Translational Myology publishing strange papers outside the scope of the journal and outside of the expertise of the editorial board.
Editor-in-Chief Ugo Carraro (University of Padua) explicitly announced EJTM’s broadening from muscle physiology into general medicine, proposing a rename to “Ejt3M (Myology, Mobility, Medicine)”. The journal subsequently started to publish Iranian clinical papers across orthopedics, dentistry, psychiatry, COVID-19, and urology – none related to myology. In 2022, an Iranian author even published in EJTM a bibliometric study of Iranian output in EJTM itself – a self-referential feedback loop that normalizes the journal as a legitimate Iranian venue and invites further submissions.
The Cegolon bridge
Luca Cegolon (University of Trieste / ASUGI public health) is the structural intermediary between Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences (BUMC) and Italian academia. He holds at least six joint publications with Einollahi and Javanbakht spanning COVID-19, plasma exchange, ozone therapy, and kidney injury — all on Iranian data: Therapeutic plasma exchange, COVID-19 (Frontiers, 2022), Acute kidney injury, COVID-19 Tehran cohort (Frontiers Immunology, 2022), Oncolytic viruses / breast cancer review (PMC, 2023). Cegolon completed his PhD (2010–2013) at Padua University Medical School — the same institution as Carraro and his co-author Giuseppe Mastrangelo. The Tehran–Trieste–Padua route carries manuscripts from a sanctioned IRGC institution to a Pavia open-access publisher with no regulatory friction: BUMC researchers → Cegolon/Mastrangelo (Trieste/Padua) → PAGEPress (Pavia).
Javanbakht as serial off-topic submitter
Javanbakht’s three EJTM papers cover kidney transplantation pharmacology (Suprotac tacrolimus), male fertility / varicocelectomy, and wrist tendon transfer surgery – none touching myology. The pattern is deliberate: EJTM is Q3 SJR, Scopus-indexed, open-access, €600 APC, and has demonstrated tolerance for off-topic Iranian clinical submissions. The Suprotac APC was almost certainly paid by NanoAlvand Company, the product’s manufacturer — a private firm with foreign-currency access that university researchers lack, paying a trivially small marketing cost for a PubMed-citable Phase IV label.
The sanctions geography
From March 2013, OFAC regulations prohibited US-owned journals from handling manuscripts authored by Iranian government employees. Elsevier instructed its US editors to reject such manuscripts outright. OFAC sanctions also generated misunderstanding among editors in other countries, who rejected Iranian manuscripts for political rather than scientific reasons, further narrowing the accessible publishing landscape.
The primary exchange is probably not financial but metric. For Cegolon, co-authorship with a high-volume Iranian clinical group accelerates publication output at a career stage where Italian Abilitazione Scientifica Nazionale metrics directly determine promotion. For BUMC and NanoAlvand, the European co-author provides editorial access, institutional legitimacy, and a sanctions-circumventing pathway to Scopus. The €600 APC is the transaction cost; mutual bibliometric benefit is the structural incentive — legal, common, and largely misaligned with quality control.