Paper mills: a novel form of publishing malpractice affecting psychology
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15626/MP.2022.3422Keywords:
Fraud, Publication, Editing, Peer Review, Open Science, Integrity, Paper millsAbstract
We first describe the phenomenon of the academic paper mill, a kind of large-scale fraud in which authors pay to have work published in reputable journals. We give examples of some known paper mills and discuss ‘red flags’ that characterise their outputs. Most of the early examples were in biomedical and computational sciences and so paper mills are less familiar to many psychologists. In the next section, we describe a broker company/paper mill, Tanu.pro, discovered by the first author, which was identified by the use of fake email addresses. This paper mill placed six outputs in the Journal of Community Psychology, a reputable journal from a mainstream publisher. We look in detail at these papers and describe the features that confirm that malpractice was involved in publication. In five cases there was circumstantial evidence of tampering with the peer review process coupled with lack of editorial oversight. These papers have now been retracted. In a final section, we discuss the need for editors of psychology journals to be aware of potential targeting by paper mills and recommend editorial procedures to counteract these.
Metrics
References
Abalkina, A. (2023). Publication and collaboration anomalies in academic papers originating from a paper mill: Evidence from a Russia-based paper mill. [Online]. Available: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2112.13322
Bik, E. (2020). Tadpole paper mill. Science Integrity Digest. [Online]. Available: https://scienceintegritydigest.com/2020/02/21/the-tadpole-paper-mill/
Bik, E. (2022). The Iranian Plant Paper Mill. Science Integrity Digest. [Online]. Available: https://scienceintegritydigest.com/2022/09/15/the-iranian-plants-paper-mill/
Bik, E., Casadevall, A., & Fang, F. C. (2016). The prevalence of inappropriate image duplication in biomedical research publications. mBio, 7(3), e00809–16. [Online]. Available: https://doi.org/10.1128/mBio.00809-16
Bimler, D. (2022). Better living through Coordination Chemistry: A descriptive study of a prolific paper mill that combines crystallography and medicine. [ResearchSquare]. Available: https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-1537438/v1
Bishop, D. (2023). Red flags for paper mills need to go beyond the level of individual articles: A case study of Hindawi special issues. [PsyArXiv]. Available: https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/6mbgv
Byrne, J. (2022). Protection of the human gene research literature from contract cheating organizations known as research paper mills. Nucleic Acids Research, 50(21), 12058–12070. Available: https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkac1139
Byrne, J., & Christopher, J. (2020). Digital magic, or the dark arts of the 21st century - how can journals and peer reviewers detect manuscripts and publications from paper mills? FEBS Letters, 594(4), 583–589. Available: https://doi.org/10.1002/1873-3468.13747
Byrne, J., & Labbé, C. (2017). Striking similarities between publications from China describing single gene knockdown experiments in human cancer cell lines. Scientometrics, 110(3), 1471–1493. Available: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-2209-6
Cabanac, G., & Labbé, C. (2021). Prevalence of nonsensical algorithmically generated papers in the scientific literature. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 72(12), 1461–1476. Available: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24495
Cabanac, G., Labbé, C., & Magazinov, A. (2021). Tortured phrases: A dubious writing style emerging in science. Evidence of critical issues affecting established journals. [arXiv]. Available: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2107.06751
Christopher, J. (2018). Systematic fabrication of scientific images revealed. FEBS Letters, 592(18), 3027–3029. Available: https://doi.org/10.1002/1873-3468.13201
Clyde, S. (2020). Begger’s test for Schrödingerean predator-prey system. [For Better Science]. Available: https://forbetterscience.com/2020/06/15/beggers-test-for-schrodingerean-predator-prey-system/
Clyde, S. (2022). Cyclotron branch, before the fall. [For Better Science]. Available: https://forbetterscience.com/2022/09/05/cyclotron-branch-before-the-fall/
COPE and STM. (2022). Paper mills. [Research report from COPE STM]. Available: https://doi.org/10.24318/jtbG8IHL9
Day, A. (2022). Exploratory analysis of text duplication in peer-review reveals peer-review fraud and paper mills. Scientometrics, 127, 5965–5987. Available: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-022-04504-5
Denisova-Schmidt, E. (2021). Responses to the challenges of training and retaining scholars in Russian academia. Mir Rossii, 30(3), 174–187. Available: https://doi.org/10.17323/1811-038X-2021-30-3-174-187
Else, H. (2023). Multimillion-dollar trade in paper authorships alarms publishers. Nature, 613, 617–618. Available: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-00062-9
Else, H., & Van Noorden, R. (2021). The fight against fake-paper factories that churn out sham science. Nature, 591, 516–519. Available: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00733-5
Guba, K. (2022). Naukometricheskiye pokazateli v otsenke rossiyskikh universitetov: Obzor issledovaniy [Scientometric indicators in the assessment of Russian universities: a review of research]. Mir Rossii, 31(1). Available: https://doi.org/10.17323/1811-038X-2022-31-1-49-73
Hvistendahl, M. (2013). China’s publication bazaar. Science, 342(6162), 1035–1039. Available: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.342.6162.1035
Magazinov, A. (2022). The incredible collaborations of Renaissance men and women. [For Better Science]. Available: https://forbetterscience.com/2022/10/19/the-incredible-collaborations-of-renaissance-men-and-women/
Marcus, A., & Oransky, I. (2018). Meet the "data thugs", out to expose shoddy and questionable research. Science. Available: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aat3133
McCook, A. (2016). 7 signs a scientific paper’s authorship was bought. [Retraction Watch]. Available: https://retractionwatch.com/2016/10/24/seven-signs-a-paper-was-for-sale/
Merton, R. (1942). The normative structure of science. In R. K. Merton (Ed.), The sociology of science. [Online]. Available: https://www.panarchy.org/merton/science.html
Mounk, Y. (2018). What an audacious hoax reveals about academia. The Atlantic. Available: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/new-sokal-hoax/572212/
Munafò, M., Nosek, B., Bishop, D., Button, K., Chambers, C., Percie du Sert, N., Simonsohn, U., Wagenmakers, E.-J., Ware, J., & Ioannidis, J. (2017). A manifesto for reproducible science. Nature Human Behaviour, 1(1), 1–9. Available: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-016-0021
Oransky, I. (2014). Are companies selling fake peer reviews to help papers get published? [Retraction Watch]. Available: https://retractionwatch.com/2014/12/19/companies-selling-fake-peer-reviews-help-papers-get-published/
Pelosi, A. (2019). Personality and fatal diseases: Revisiting a scientific scandal. Journal of Health Psychology, 24(4), 421–439. Available: https://doi.org/10.1177/1359105318822045
Perron, B., Hiltz-Perron, O., & Victor, B. (2021). Revealed: The inner workings of a paper mill. [Retraction Watch]. Available: https://retractionwatch.com/2021/12/20/revealed-the-inner-workings-of-a-paper-mill/
Retraction Watch. (2022). Exclusive: Elsevier retracting 500 papers for shoddy peer review. [Retraction Watch]. Available: https://retractionwatch.com/2022/10/28/exclusive-elsevier-retracting-500-papers-for-shoddy-peer-review/
Retraction Watch. (2022). Physics publisher retracting nearly 500 likely paper mill papers. [Retraction Watch]. Available: https://retractionwatch.com/2022/09/09/physics-publisher-retracting-nearly-500-likely-paper-mill-papers/
Royal Society of Chemistry. (2021). RSC Advances retractions. Retrieved December 15, 2021, from https://www.rsc.org/news-events/articles/2021/jan/paper-mill-response
Schneider, L. (2020). The full-service paper mill and its Chinese customers. For Better Science. Retrieved from https://forbetterscience.com/2020/01/24/the-full-service-paper-mill-and-its-chinese-customers/
Seifert, R. (2021). How Naunyn-Schmiedeberg’s Archives of Pharmacology deals with fraudulent papers from paper mills. Naunyn-Schmiedeberg’s Archives of Pharmacology, 394(3), 431–436. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00210-021-02056-8
Simonsohn, U. (2013). Just Post It: The lesson from two cases of fabricated data detected by statistics alone. Psychological Science, 24(10), 1875–1888. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613480366
Sokal, A., & Bricmont, J. (1998). Intellectual impostures. Profile Books.
Sokal, A. (1996). Transgressing the boundaries: Toward a transformative hermeneutics of quantum gravity. Social Text, 46/47, 217–252. https://doi.org/10.2307/466856
Stroebe, W., Postmes, T., & Spears, R. (2012). Scientific misconduct and the myth of self-correction in science. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7(6), 670–688. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691612460687
Teixeira da Silva, J. (2017). Does China need to rethink its metrics- and citation-based research rewards policies? Scientometrics, 112(3), 1853–1857. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2430-y
Van der Heyden, M. (2021). The 1-h fraud detection challenge. Naunyn-Schmiedeberg’s Archives of Pharmacology, 394, 1633–1640. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00210-021-02120-3
Downloads
Published
Versions
- 2024-03-17 (3)
- 2023-12-06 (2)
- 2023-12-06 (1)
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2023 Professor Bishop, Dr Abalkina
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.