After years of study, investment and dedication, a scientist finally achieves the results that confirm his hypothesis. After a long process of hard and rigorous work, the most anticipated moment arrives: to publish his findings to the world through a scientific publication.
Unfortunately, this natural order of science has been distorted, skipping the entire rigorous process and going straight to publication, but without any real discovery. In recent years, the integrity of science has been threatened by an alarming problem: the large-scale production and sale of fake academic research.
Recently, The Conversation published an extensive article detailing this scandal, bringing to light shocking facts about corruption in scientific journals and in academia itself.
According to authors Frederik Joelving, Cyril Labbé and Guillaume Cabanac, private companies around the world are fabricating fraudulent studies that end up being published in scientific journals and influencing important decisions in fields such as medicine and engineering.
This has serious consequences, as fake research can mislead scientists, delay discoveries and even compromise the safety of medical diagnoses and treatments.
The scale of the problem is difficult to measure precisely, but it is estimated that at least 55,000 academic articles have already been officially retracted for being inaccurate or fraudulent. However, experts believe the real number is much higher, possibly in the hundreds of thousands.
Retracted articles from academic journals each year. The increase in retractions in 2023 is partly due to a spate of more than 11,300 retractions in the past two years from Wiley, one of the top five academic publishers, which has closed 19 compromised journals overseen by its subsidiary Hindawi. Retractions for 2024 are incomplete.
About 119,000 academic articles and conference papers are published each week, adding up to more than 6 million new studies per year.
Some publishers estimate that at least 2% of submitted articles are likely to be fake, but at some journals the percentage may be much higher.
These misleading studies litter the scientific literature, making it harder for serious researchers to identify which works are reliable.
A concrete example of this impact occurred with scientists Frank Cackowski and Steven Zielske of Wayne State University, who were investigating new treatment possibilities for prostate cancer.
Assistant professor Frank Cackowski, left, and researcher Steven Zielske at Wayne State University in Detroit were suspicious of a cancer research paper that was later retracted. Amy Sacka, CC BY-ND
During their research, they came across a study published in 2018 that suggested a molecule called SNHG1 played a role in prostate cancer.
Curious, they decided to test this hypothesis, but after several experiments, they found no evidence that the molecule had anything to do with the disease.
Their suspicions grew when they noticed that the graphs in the paper were identical, even though they were supposed to show different data, a strong indication of manipulation. Other gross errors in the data prompted Zielske to report the fraud anonymously on PubPeer, a forum where scientists review and discuss suspicious academic publications.
The journal eventually retracted the paper, admitting that the data had been falsified. However, the problem persisted: when analyzing other studies on the same molecule, Zielske found that most of the 150 papers published on the topic appeared to be fake, making it even harder to obtain funding for legitimate research.
This crisis has deep roots in the academic system, which pressures researchers to publish constantly in order to secure recognition, promotions and job security.
This competitive environment has given rise to the motto “publish or perish”, making scientific publishing a lucrative business. Companies and malicious individuals exploit this pressure, fabricating fake articles and selling co-authorships to those who need publications on their CVs.
These paper mills operate globally, but are most common in emerging economies, where governments encourage academic publishing to gain international prestige.
In some cases, researchers may pay for authorship of articles or even for editorships in scientific journals. Although it is not known exactly when paper mills began operating on a large scale, 2004 is indicated as the year of the first retracted article due to the suspicion of these entities’ involvement.
An extreme example comes from Latvia, where a Russian-linked paper mill claims to have published more than 12,650 fraudulent studies since 2012.
Another case that illustrates corruption in the academic publishing system comes from Ahmed Torad, the editor-in-chief of a physiotherapy journal in Egypt.
Torad asked for a 30% commission for each article that was accepted for publication in Brazilian journals. He also offered to help “connect” researchers and journals, although his methods clearly involved unethical practices.
Torad justified his actions by saying that this type of arrangement was common in journals that charged authors, even though the journal in question was a publisher that did not charge publishing fees. This shows how the pressure to publish can corrupt the system, leading to the pursuit of bribes and favors as a way to speed up the publication process.
Facebook ad from an Indian paper mill selling co-authorship of a paper. Screenshot by The Conversation
The crisis is also affecting the peer review system, which is supposed to ensure the quality of published research. Reviewers work voluntarily and often do not have the time or motivation to thoroughly analyze papers.
In addition, some publishers choose reviewers who are more likely to accept papers, since rejections can mean lost money. In some cases, criminals create fake reviewer profiles to quickly approve fraudulent papers.
In light of this scenario, experts are looking for ways to combat fraud. Computer scientist Guillaume Cabanac has developed a tool called Problematic Paper Screener, which analyzes millions of papers for signs of forgery.
One of the most common signs is the presence of “tortured sentences,” which occur when plagiarism software replaces scientific terms with inappropriate synonyms to bypass automatic copy detectors.
Papers published in 2022 that triggered the Papermill Alarm. When Adam Day ran his company’s Papermill Alarm software on the 5.7 million papers published in 2022 in the OpenAlex database, he found a worrying number of potentially fake papers, especially in biology, medicine, computer science, chemistry, and materials science. The Papermill Alarm flags papers that contain textual similarities to known fakes.
Jennifer Byrne, an Australian scientist and former head of a cancer research lab, describes the impact of these frauds as “unparalleled” in her 30-year career. She says the number of fake papers in human genetics may exceed 100,000 publications, and more than 50% of papers on certain cancers may be fraudulent.
This glut of dubious studies is undermining trust in the scientific literature and undermining genuine research.
The ivermectin case illustrates the dangers of this crisis. Falsified studies claimed the drug was effective against COVID-19, prompting governments and health professionals to recommend its use. However, these studies were later retracted, but not before causing confusion and leading many people to take a drug with no proven efficacy.
To address this problem, experts suggest changes to the academic evaluation system. Instead of rewarding the number of publications, some initiatives propose prioritizing the real impact of research, such as the “top 10 in 10” model of the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, which values the relevance and quality of studies.
Despite increased awareness of the problem, many falsified articles still remain in the scientific literature for years, without correction.
In a 2022 study, 97% of 712 genetic research articles considered problematic remained unchanged. This is because publishers are often slow to retract fraudulent articles, even when alerted to clear signs of fraud.
Former editor of Elsevier’s Fuel journal, Jillian Goldfarb, shared her frustration with the lack of action by publishers in the face of the growing wave of fraud. During her career as an editor, she was responsible for evaluating more than 50 articles per day, but due to lack of time and resources, she was unable to detect all the signs of fraud.
The pressure to publish more papers and increase submission and citation rates is contributing to publishers’ laxity in monitoring the quality of articles.
“Even good, honest reviewers have become apathetic” because of “the volume of bad research that’s going through the system,” said Adam Day, who runs Clear Skies, a London-based company that develops data-driven methods to help identify fake academic papers and journals. “Any publisher can tell you they’ve seen reports where it’s obvious the reviewer hasn’t read the paper.”
Meanwhile, scientists like Steven Zielske continue to fight to expose fraudulent papers and clean up the academic literature. The problem has become so bad, he says, that he no longer trusts an academic paper without first scrutinizing it. “You can’t just read the abstract and believe it. I kind of assume everything is wrong,” he says.
The integrity of science is at risk, and tackling this crisis requires a concerted effort by researchers, publishers, governments and the global scientific community. Transparency and strengthening review mechanisms are essential to prevent misinformation from spreading and compromising scientific progress.
READ MORE:
Fake papers are contaminating the world’s scientific literature, fueling a corrupt industry and slowing legitimate lifesaving medical research
Published: January 29, 2025 2.53pm CET
Authors:
Frederik Joelving
Contributing editor, Retraction Watch
Cyril Labbé
Professor of Computer Science, Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA)
Guillaume Cabanac
Professor of Computer Science, Institut de Recherche en Informatique de Toulouse
Problematic Paper Screener: Trawling for fraud in the scientific literature
Published: January 29, 2025 3.31pm CET
Authors:
Guillaume Cabanac
Professor of Computer Science, Institut de Recherche en Informatique de Toulouse
Cyril Labbé
Professor of Computer Science, Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA)
Frederik Joelving
Contributing editor, Retraction Watch
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