Academic "Paper Mills" Are Bribing Editors at Scholarly Journals
JoeMerchant writes:
Paper mills are bribing editors at scholarly journals, Science investigation finds | Science | AAAS
One evening in June 2023, Nicholas Wise, a fluid dynamics researcher / scientific fraud buster, was digging around on shady Facebook groups where he found someone calling themselves Jack Ben, of a firm whose Chinese name translates to Olive Academic, offering journal editors large sums of cash in return for accepting papers for publication...
[...] At least tens of millions of dollars flow to the paper mill industry each year, estimates Matt Hodgkinson of the independent charity UK Research Integrity Office, which offers support to further good research practices, who is also a council member at the nonprofit Committee on Publication Ethics. Publishers and journals, recognizing the threat, have beefed up their research integrity teams and retracted papers, sometimes by the hundreds. They are investing in ways to better spot third-party involvement, such as screening tools meant to flag bogus papers.
So cash-rich paper mills have evidently adopted a new tactic: bribing editors and planting their own agents on editorial boards to ensure publication of their manuscripts. An investigation by Science and Retraction Watch, in partnership with Wise and other industry experts, identified several paper mills and more than 30 editors of reputable journals who appear to be involved in this type of activity. Many were guest editors of special issues, which have been flagged in the past as particularly vulnerable to abuse because they are edited separately from the regular journal. But several were regular editors or members of journal editorial boards. And this is likely just the tip of the iceberg.
Hodgkinson recalls hearing one publisher say it "had to sack 300 editors for manipulative behavior." He adds, "These are organized crime rings that are committing large-scale fraud."
Being from pulpwood country, the title led me to believe I would be reading a story about how "Big Cardboard" was bribing academia to publish research beneficial to their industry - as "Big Oil" is so famous for... Nope, this is a different twist, broader and even more troubling.
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