Science and Nature have unveiled a disturbing trend of fraudulent research papers by shady paper mills, threatening the credibility of academic research. For a fee, anyone can be listed as an author of a scientific article without doing the work. The number of retractions due to paper mills has skyrocketed, with major publishers like Hindawi, Wiley, SAGE, and Elsevier retracting hundreds of articles. Paper mills operate globally, offering services like fake reviews and bribing editors. Detecting these articles involves tracking retraction patterns, but the scale of the issue is vast, with an estimated 400,000 fraudulent papers infiltrating scientific literature. Paper mills cost the public millions and divert resources from legitimate research.
https://theconversation.com/paper-mills-the-cartel-like-companies-behind-fraudulent-scientific-journals-230124