John OverholtDec 27, 2022

There’s an absolutely astonishing story brewing in the medieval manuscripts world of a Potemkin Village scholarly institute built out of plagiarism and stock photos. I can scarcely do it justice except to link to Peter Kidd’s thorough deconstruction of #receptio #receptiogate

Part 1: https://mssprovenance.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-receptio-rossi-affair-part-i-staff.html

Part 2: https://mssprovenance.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-receptio-rossi-affair-part-ii.html

Part 3: https://mssprovenance.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-receptio-rossi-affair-iii-my.html

Part 4: https://mssprovenance.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-receptio-rossi-affair-iv-my.html

Part 5: https://mssprovenance.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-receptio-rossi-affair-part-v.html

The RECEPTIO-Rossi Affair, Part I: The Staff

Show threadJessamyn
@overholt I am interested in this story but also would love an executive summary. This Ms Rossi made up the institution (or at least a large part of it) to get grants and also... other bad shit? Is RECEPTIO a thing people knew and thought was a reputable institution?
Dec 27, 2022 at 8:48pmWeb
Show threadMark SaltveitDec 27, 2022

@jessamyn @overholt Short story is, allegedly, yes and no, in that order. It's hard for a USian to fathom because there is no funding for academia like Switzerland's.

She also helmed a (government funded?) arts magazine called "energie9" I believe, circa 2014. And there was an odd precursor scandal in 2018 involving a French professor thatvawarded a "Nobel Prize in Philology" to a Romanian scholar; a publication there exposed a very similar nest of sham organizations.

Show threadMark SaltveitDec 27, 2022

@jessamyn @overholt here is the toot about the related scandal with the "Nobel Prize in Philology."
https://mastodon.cc/@aaronm/109581599415095215

The other fun thing was a call for applicattions to a residency her institute was hosting in their "historic residence" in Lugano - that they "demand" the resident to pay 700€ per month for. Giving the impression, accurate or not, that the institute is just their house, and they wanted a paying roommate.

AaronM (@[email protected])

@[email protected] I haven’t seen reference to this side of the story on Mastodon yet. #Receptio’s origin story says they were founded at the “behest of the International Philological Society” https://www.receptio.eu/story Except that’s a scam too. https://www.scena9.ro/en/article/romanian-academy-nobel-florent-montaclair-chomsky #Receptiogate

Mastodon.cc
Show threadJessamynDec 27, 2022
@taoish @overholt Oh thank you, very helpful.
Show threadSarahDec 27, 2022
@jessamyn @overholt it seems unclear to me that anyone really paid any attention to the institute except for funders. She got some pretty big grants to publish these things OA but instead she ripped off someone else’s research wholesale and then got pissy when asked about it. She did host an event—or maybe said she was going to?—but she’s not a name nor is her center.
Show threadSarahDec 27, 2022
@jessamyn @overholt but also the details are hilarious af, like that all her responses are pdfs on academia.edu?! And she was editing her website and fake book as people were watching! Plus she keeps emailing in different personas.
Show threadJessamynDec 27, 2022
@wynkenhimself @overholt Thank you, it was so confusing to me from someone externalto nearly all of this who wasn't privy to it from the beginning. cc/ @tim who was also looking.
Show threadCyber YukiDec 29, 2022
@wynkenhimself @jessamyn @overholt ... wow. 🙊
Show threadVolker Schröder 🌎Dec 27, 2022
@wynkenhimself @jessamyn @overholt Their YouTube channel documents some of the recent activities (mostly online because of covid). There are several projects ongoing at the same time, not "only" the fragmentology - it all seems way too ambitious and grandiose. At least a few junior scholars (graduate students or postdocs) seem to be involved, and they might be the ones who will suffer the most from this.
https://www.youtube.com/@fondazionereceptio9581/videos
Fondazione RECEPTIO

Canale Video della Fondazione RECEPTIO, viale Castagnola 27, 6900 Lugano

YouTube
Show threadSarahDec 27, 2022
@Marphurius @jessamyn @overholt oof, that's no good!
Show threadVolker Schröder 🌎Dec 28, 2022
@wynkenhimself @jessamyn @overholt Good news: it seems at least one of those post-docs working with RECEPTIO was made up (exposed by @mlobelart on Twitter)
Show threadTim CarmodyDec 27, 2022
@jessamyn @overholt +1 re: executive summary, I’ve been following this from the beginning and still saw five new blog posts and groaned