SCAM ONGOING, BEWARE: Publish Pro / Med Students Network research “mentorship”
SCAM ONGOING, BEWARE: My 10-month nightmare with Publish Pro / Medical Students Network research “mentorship”
I paid ₹25,000 for a research mentorship program that promised a finished systematic review in 6–8 weeks. That was almost ten months ago. I still don’t have a draft, a working mentor, or my money back. I’m writing this all out because I’ve watched other people’s complaints about this organisation quietly vanish from their pages, and I want a permanent record of what actually happened.
It started simply enough. Publish Pro, run under something called Med Students Network, offers paid mentorship for systematic, literature, and narrative reviews. You pay upfront, they assign you a mentor, form a small group of candidates working together, and the whole thing is supposed to wrap up in six to eight weeks. Buried in tiny print in the contract was a line saying no refunds under any circumstances. I didn’t think much of it at the time, because why would I need a refund from a program that takes two months?
After I paid, all communication moved to Telegram. No formal channel, nobody to hold accountable, just a group chat. And then the silence started. Weeks went by. Emails, calls, messages, nothing. The only thing that ever got a response was threatening to escalate. Once I did that, a “new” mentor suddenly appeared, handed us a topic, told us to get started, and then disappeared again for another two months.
Eventually I was told my original mentor was unwell and had been replaced by a second one. Here’s where it got strange. While I was messaging this “new” mentor, I received a message clearly meant to come from the first mentor’s account. It was deleted within seconds and the exact same message was instantly resent from the second mentor’s account. Same wording, same moment, two different names. That’s when I realized it was the same person the entire time, just switching identities to buy more time.
Not long after, a third “mentor” showed up with the same excuses. At one point someone in the group was told to prepare a draft, but none of us actually knew who this person was or whether they were even real.
Meanwhile I noticed other people commenting publicly, asking where the service they paid for was. Those comments would disappear within a day or two, and the people who posted them would get blocked. I eventually got blocked too, on Instagram, for asking why they weren’t responding, and later on Telegram, for pushing for a refund.
The last straw was when I emailed asking to withdraw and get my money back. Their reply was that I needed to confirm my “continued interest” by a certain date, or I’d be moved to a different project. I had already been stuck in the same non-moving project for a full year at that point. Moving me to a new one would just mean starting the cycle over again.
Here I am now, nine to ten months in, ₹25,000 down, with zero completed work and zero refund. The whole thing feels designed to run out the clock. They never say no outright, they just delay, swap mentors, and stonewall until people give up and walk away.
If you’re thinking about signing up for this, read the refund clause before you pay anything, and ask current group members directly how their timelines have actually gone. If you’re already stuck like I am, screenshot everything now while it’s fresh, and look into a payment chargeback or a consumer complaint, even this far in.
If anyone else has dealt with Publish Pro or Medical Students Network, I’d really like to hear it in the comments. Screenshot your comment before you post it, because theirs tend to disappear too.
attached the link to their website instagram