Are you aware of what's been going on? Crime is on the rise.
I’m not talking about moped theft, murder, or even unpaid TV licences. Something more insidious…. Colleagues in your MDT might even be complicit
Because beneath the academic journal lurks a festering criminal underground. A whole cartel of “paper mills” (the academic mafia) quietly polluting research with fake studies that slip into print, only to be retracted and shredded in PubPeer comments later.
Whispers about the medical mob have been circulating like the boogeyman. Rumours, mostly. Until now.
A paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has exposed the truth, unpacking just how rife fake academia really is.
But first, how do these mills actually work?
You’re a resident doctor. The job is already hard enough. But now, if you want any real shot at a job in your desired speciality, you’ve got to “enrich” your portfolio too.
So you play the game of academia, trying your best to get published. But grovelling and kissing up gets tiring. Surely there must be an easier way?
You’re approached by a shady man, in a shadier trenchcoat, with shady sunglasses to boot. He claims he can make your academic woes fade away. You’ll get published. All he’ll need is your name, institution, and a $500-$2000 payment.
You give him what he wants.
In his lair, he has an army of ghostwriters who:
Invent a study (fake data, made-up participants, fictional lab results)
Recycle old graphs/images from unrelated real studies
Insert citations to other clients’ papers, so everyone in the network boosts their citation.
After the paper is cooked, they must infiltrate the journals. The mills pay off editors to traffic their research. They wave the paper through without real scrutiny.
And just like that, your name’s on a totally-not-bogus paper.
No one’s the wiser.
Enter Richardson et al. These researchers dug deep into PLOS ONE, a megajournal with open metadata. What they found was a web of suspicious editors and dodgy papers.
Key findings were:
They found 32,786 unique suspected paper mill articles
The flagged editors handled 1.3% of total papers published, but were responsible for 30.2% of the papers retracted articles - one editor in particular put out 79 papers with 49 being retracted.
Image duplication: 2,213 articles were flagged for having duplicated images – a clear indicator of research misconduct. Worryingly, only 34% had been retracted.
Beyond PLOS ONE, the same suspicious editor behaviour was spotted across 10 journals published by Hindawi – a publisher that had to close down after being overrun by paper mill spam.
The team uncovered outfits like ARDA — a publication broker offering "journal placements" for $250 to $500. The authors note ARDA pushes for “problematic” articles to be published on behalf of their clients.
So, we know the fraud’s real. We know it’s organised. And we know it’s accelerating. But the question is what are institutions going to do about it. The game of cat and mouse is looking very one-sided.
Publishing fraud has alarming consequences on the quality of scientific research. Without drastic action, more snake oil will end up in systematic reviews.
That said…If you know a paper mill runner, send them my way 👀 If you can’t beat ’em… join ’em.
