In recent years, there have been many incidents of academic paper fraud. How serious is the degree of paper fraud? Let's take a look at the numbers first.
Recently, the well-known British academic publishing house "John Wiley" (Wiley) announced the closure of 19 of its academic journals due to a paper fraud scandal; Joachim Boldt, a German anesthesiologist, who has had more than 200 papers retracted by various scientific journals; And, in 2023 alone, more than 10,000 scientific papers have been retracted.
In December, the scientific journal Nature pointed out that academic paper fraud is getting worse every year, and many publishers are trying to find out the fake articles produced by paper factories. In 2023, the number of retracted papers in a single year has reached a record high. These large numbers of fake papers are likely to lead to an increasing lack of effective research bases in many scientific fields, and the development of many scientific fields will be hindered.
Expert: And that's just the tip of the iceberg
According to research in Nature, the number of papers found and withdrawn by publishers last year hit a new high, but academic integrity experts point out that this is likely just the tip of the iceberg of all fraudulent papers.
2013年至2023年,每年论文遭退的数量。 （Source：Nature）
According to Nature, the retraction rate has soared in each of the past 20 years. For example, among the papers published in 2022, the proportion of retracted papers is more than 0.2%, that is, for every 500 papers published, one is unqualified. This figure is 10 times more than 20 years ago and more than 3 times higher than 10 years ago.
Among the papers that have been retracted in the past 20 years, the most frequently produced countries include Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Russia, and China. Saudi Arabia has the highest retraction rate, with 30 articles per 10,000 articles being retracted.
Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Russia, and China are the countries with the highest retraction rates. （Source：Nature）
If conference papers presented at academic seminars are included, the country with the highest retraction rate is China; A quarter of all retracted papers were conference papers. Among them, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has the largest number of retractions, with more than 10,000 conference papers retracted in 20 years.
According to Nature, the number of retracted papers is currently "growing faster than the number of scientific papers". So far, 50,000 papers have been retracted over the years, but researchers estimate that hundreds of thousands of scientific papers may be produced through paper factories worldwide. David Bimler, New Zealand's integrity detective, warns:
"Even if no one reads them, the products produced by the paper factory are a problem, because they may be collated into a literature review along with other articles, or even whitewashed into the mainstream literature."
A publishing house that takes down 8,000 articles a year
Of the more than 10,000 papers that were retracted last year, more than 8,000 were from Hindawi, a scientific journal publisher owned by John Wiley.
外媒披露，Hindawi编辑与诚信专家发现，大量文章有异状，包括引用不相关文献、用字不连贯等；多本科学特刊似乎也有“大规模系统性操作的迹象”（indicators of large-scale systematic manipulation）。
Hindawi's investigation revealed that its special issues had been infiltrated by paper mills, and they first withdrew 500 papers in September 2022 and suspended the publication of special issues at the end of that year. By 2023, Hindawi had taken down more than 8,000 papers, however, according to a report by parent company John Wiley, Hindawi's cleanup of fake papers was not over.
To combat the flood of fake papers, Hindawi lost between $35 million and $40 million last year. In December 2023, John Wiley announced the complete closure of the Hindawi brand, and existing publications will be reincorporated into John Wiley. In May of this year, John Wiley announced the closure of 19 journals belonging to Hindawi.
NEW: Wiley to shutter 19 more journals, some that were tainted by the work of “paper mills". In the past two years, Wiley has retracted more than 11,300 papers and closed 4 other journalshttps://t.co/WL5sxTvZ6U
— Nidhi Sabbar (@નિધિસુબ્સ) May 14, 2024
A breakthrough for academic publishers: special issues
According to Nature, some of Hindawi's retracted articles use "tortured phrases", which refers to the choice of bizarre and unconscionable words in order to avoid plagiarism detection mechanisms; Some papers appear to be using artificial intelligence, but they are not explicitly disclosed.
John Wiley also mentioned in a report that they reviewed and retracted the indicators of the paper, including the content of the paper does not match the field of the journal, the description of the paper does not match the content of the research, the citation data is inappropriate, and the text contains nonsensical or irrelevant content. However, despite their errors, they were cited more than 35,000 times.
On June 5, Hindawi posted that they had been included in John Wiley and that their fan account was about to be closed. （Source：Hindawi）
Most of the retracted articles were from special issues published by Hindawi, which are usually supervised by guest editors. The Guardian notes, however, that paper mills are likely to bribe journal editors and even manage to make their men guest editors so that a large number of fake papers can be published.
专门关注遭撤回论文的网站“撤回观察”（Retraction Watch）的创办人──马库斯（Adam Marcus）与奥兰斯基（Ivan Oransky）──也在《华盛顿邮报》发布评论表示：
"The paper mill seems to be exploiting the blind spot of the big presses: high-margin but poorly regulated special issues."
In response, John Wiley said that based on the results of the investigation, hundreds of guest editors of special issues suspected of deception have been banned from editing or publishing articles again. In addition, they have created a stricter regulatory process to confirm guest editor status and conduct closer scrutiny of manuscripts.
However, Jennifer Byrne, head of the Medical Research Publishing and Research Integrity Group at the University of Sydney, points out that many guest editors' experiences may seem reliable, but they may be backed up by papers produced by paper factories, and even if an authentication mechanism is created, it is still difficult to fully ensure the quality of the journal. He speculates that the problem will continue to expand as the methods of paper factories become more complex and the papers produced become more difficult to detect.
（Source：Unsplash）
Counterfeiting industry chain: authors are promoted, and publishers make money
In fact, it's not just Hindawi that faces a serious counterfeiting crisis, a spokesperson for John Wiley stressed that many publishers are facing a similar dilemma, and that it is difficult to solve this crisis with improvements within a single institution.
The founders of Retraction Watch noted that this kind of academic misconduct "is clearly being industrialized on an unprecedented scale." The reasons for the rise of paper factories include the fact that many young doctors and scientists have to publish more papers in pursuit of promotion; In many countries, scholars' remuneration is adjusted based on the number of papers published; The ranking of higher education institutions is also affected by the number of citations in the paper.
In addition, the author or factory may pay the publisher for the successful publication of the paper. With this mutually beneficial relationship, it becomes easier and easier for a paper to get into a scientific journal. Marcus Munafo, a professor at Bristol University, points out:
"If more and more researchers publish papers just for the sake of publishing, and more and more journals are monetizing those papers, it's a perfect storm. ”
Pollution needs to be eliminated at the source!
In order to solve the dilemma of fraudulent papers, the founders of "Retract Watch" pointed out that in addition to strengthening censorship, it is necessary to start with the root causes, including giving research regulators more power and funding; abolish the mechanism of measuring the weight of papers by the number of citations; Academic journals themselves should also be reluctant to stop the business model of allowing authors to pay to publish papers.
"It's an important thing to uncover fake papers, but it's like building more and more sewage treatment plants in estuaries to prevent the oceans from being polluted. More treatment plants are necessary, but it's equally important to change people's motivation – in this case, the "publish or perish" model – so that pollution doesn't enter the river upstream. ”
Note: Publication or death is used to describe a working condition of faculty members in a research university, referring to the pressure they face to publish academic papers in order to succeed in their academic careers.
（首图来源：Unsplash）