The following is an excerpt from MedPage Today via Wall Street Journal.
Fraudulent studies have infiltrated top scientific journals, “leading to thousands of retractions and millions of dollars in lost revenue,” the Wall Street Journal reported.
“Although this large-scale fraud represents a small percentage of submissions to journals, it threatens the legitimacy of the nearly $30 billion academic publishing industry and the credibility of science as a whole,” the article stated.
Wiley, a 217-year-old publisher based in Hoboken, New Jersey, which is slated to close 19 journals, has taken the largest hit, WSJ reported.
The problem is due to paper mills — entities that, “for a price, will list a scientist as an author of a wholly or partially fabricated paper,” WSJ noted. The paper mills then submit the work, “generally avoiding the most prestigious journals in favor of publications such as one-off special editions that might not undergo as thorough a review and where they have a better chance of getting bogus work published.”
And, on the other side, there are motivating factors at play, WSJ noted.
“World-over, scientists are under pressure to publish in peer-reviewed journals — sometimes to win grants, other times as conditions for promotions,” WSJ wrote. “Researchers say this motivates people to cheat the system. Many journals charge a fee to authors to publish in them.”
At Wiley, closures are due to multiple factors, WSJ reported. Though a spokesperson for Wiley confirmed to WSJ that some of the journals were affected by paper mills, they declined to provide an exact number.
