International Biographical Centre
publisher owned by Melrose Press Ltd that specializes in producing biographical publications
The International Biographical Centre was a publisher owned by Melrose Press Ltd that specializes in producing biographical publications, such as the Dictionary of International Biography, Great Men and Women of Science and other vanity awards. It is situated in Ely, Cambridgeshire in the United Kingdom.
Government consumer advocates have described it as a "scam" or as "pretty tacky". Its use to support the granting of a US O-1 visa (for individuals with an extraordinary ability) has been described by US employer Oracle Corporation as purchasing "vanity accolades" to use as "phony credentials", with a warning that "visa fraud is a serious crime" with severe penalties.
In 2007, referring to the International Biographical Centre, the American Biographical Institute and Marquis Who's Who, Jan Margosian, consumer information coordinator for the Oregon Department of Justice, warned consumers to be wary and called the companies "pretty tacky", adding "I don't know why they would put you in there if they weren't hoping to get you to buy the book.. "You truly have to look at how they are marketing and what the spin is. It's something you might want to watch out for."
Activity
When it was still in business, the International Biographical Centre created "awards" and offered them widely. In 2004, an award was said to cost the recipient US$495 or £295, but in 2010 the cost could be as high as $395 for a Commemorative Medal or US$440 for a laminated certificate.
The Department of Commerce of the Government of Western Australia classified the Centre's offers as a scam and said:
"The material promoting the International Biographical Centre creates a false impression about the credentials of the organisation. It also wrongly implies that the receiver of the letter has been picked through a special research process considering their work and qualifications."
It quoted blog users who describe the publications as a "Who’s Who of gullible people".
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “International Biographical Centre” is publisher owned by Melrose Press Ltd that specializes in producing biographical publications. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through International, Biographical and Centre, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1666381. VIAF identifies the subject as 134883468. The Library of Congress control number is n81141494. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2007, 2004 and 2010.
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This entry incorporates text from “International Biographical Centre” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.