By Stacey Kusterbeck
Principal investigators may build on previous study findings to come up with a new research question. The general public may hear about those study findings on the car radio on the way to work. Both of these situations depend on a level of trust that exists, both in science overall and in the individuals who conduct clinical trials. Other than isolated — and sometimes egregious — cases of research fraud, most people feel they can rely on the fact that study findings are the result of legitimate science.
Recent developments are casting doubt on this longstanding assumption. Shockingly, the growth rate of fabricated research papers is now exceeding that of legitimate papers.
“This development is fueled by the ‘paper mill’ business that is in the billion-dollar range. It generates fake scientific papers for profit at a rapid pace,” says Roland W. Herzog, PhD, professor of pediatrics, microbiology, and immunology at Indiana University.
Publishing made-up studies or fraudulent results obviously is unethical and always has been. What is new is that it is not only the sellers of fake papers and the scientists who participate in such conduct who are to blame.
“It is also institutions and government policies in some countries,” says Herzog. Some are setting unrealistic expectations for scientists and physicians in training, and for faculty members when it comes to graduation, promotion, or grant funding. Institutions are putting enormous pressure on individuals to publish large numbers of papers in a short time. Some are even pressured to contribute data in areas that they lack expertise in. “There are broader implications for the culture of science in systems that fuel fabrication of research papers,” says Herzog.
Trainees and faculty at those institutions are learning the wrong lesson: That one can get ahead by cheating but will stay behind if one does not cheat. “Such systems actually select against scientists who have scientific questions they are passionate about finding answers to, rather than merely pursuing career goals,” says Herzog.
In Herzog’s experience, organized businesses selling fake research have intruded less into the United States than they have in some other countries. “Therefore, I think the scientific community should make it clear to the public that in the U.S. we hold scientists to high ethical standards — which is one of the reasons the U.S. is a leader in research. Nonetheless, like in every other area of our society, individuals, or sometimes a ring of individuals, may be bad apples. We need to be vigilant, and also continuously review our institutional policies, both on the local and national level,” asserts Herzog.
Institutions in the United States typically mandate training in responsible research conduct for faculty and students. “Much in science is based on trust. Institutions could emphasize more, during the hiring process and evaluations, that research integrity is paramount to the institution’s reputation,” says Herzog. Globally, institutions should review their expectations for graduation, hiring, and promotion. “Simply counting the number of publications, calculating impact scores, or demanding publication output in short time frames only promotes misconduct,” says Herzog.
Changes also need to come from publishers. A high volume of paper mill-generated manuscripts puts tremendous stress on the review process, overwhelming journals and their editors. “At the same time, publishers need to invest much more heavily in staff, methods, and technologies to detect fake studies. While acceptance of such papers increases their profit margin from collecting publication fees, publishers of scientific literature also have an ethical responsibility. It cannot all be about volume and profit margins,” says Herzog.
When conducting a literature review about genes involved in aging, Thomas Stoeger, PhD, came across a flood of manuscripts that were all published in a reputable specialty journal on aging, but did not seem to discuss aging. Further, all the papers seemed to be written in a formulaic style. A colleague noticed the same thing in the cancer research field. Both researchers suspected the suspicious papers were from paper mills — poor-quality or fraudulent papers that are passed off as genuine research studies. “These organizations have likely already operated for more than 10 years,” says Stoeger.
Stoeger and colleagues got curious about how common paper mills were beyond their own areas of research and whether the problem was contained or growing. The researchers conducted a large-scale data analysis of scientific literature and case studies and uncovered a sophisticated network facilitating fraud.1 The findings supported the following conclusions:
- Groups of individuals were highly organized and managed to get fraudulent papers published in a number of journals. “In other words, it wasn’t just individuals getting fake papers published — it was groups of individuals [who] worked together,” says Stoeger. The fraudulent papers eventually are detected and removed, but not before the damage is done.
- Large groups of authors and editors were cooperating to facilitate fraud.
- Brokers (people serving as conduits between those who produced and published the fraudulent research) were facilitating the publication of papers in targeted journals.
- Certain subfields were targeted by those involved in scientific fraud.
The individuals perpetuating scientific fraud used multiple strategies to successfully evade interventions. “We were surprised by the scope and rising growth of paper mills, but also by their robustness against existing countermeasures. They seem surprisingly well-organized and professional,” reports Stoeger.
The number of fraudulent publications is growing at a faster rate than legitimate scientific publications, the authors concluded. It is far easier to publish a manuscript without undergoing peer review or if editors are actively cooperating to publish it. “Producing a fraudulent manuscript without being bound to truth or scholarly insight is easier than doing genuine work. With genuine scholarship and publishing getting more difficult, paper mills could gain an increasing advantage over genuine works,” says Stoeger.
Even one fraudulent manuscript can waste time and resources of researchers who mistake it for real science. “Organized scientific fraud is an even more serious problem, due to the scale at which such fraud can be produced. The scale of paper mills can undermine the literature in fields of research that are important for human health and well-being,” says Stoeger.
Some authors use the paper mills to advance their careers. “Most manuscripts from paper mills have not been retracted,” says Stoeger. Institutions also can benefit from research paper mills. If study authors at a given institution cite papers published by other faculty in an unscrupulous manner, it can dramatically inflate the number of citations from that institution, boosting academic rankings.2
One obstacle to catching fraud is that research integrity initiatives are focused on the wrongdoing of individuals or on resolving conflicts within an institution. Initiatives are not geared to detect large schemes of fraud committed by close-knit groups of people. Likewise, organizations that provide professional support to those using their dubious services go undetected. “One approach would be to integrate large-scale organized schemes of fraud in part of training, such as Responsible Conduct of Research training given to scholars. Having seen curricula of such courses, they often do not seem to reflect today’s nature of scientific fraud,” says Stoeger.
Paper mill customers are overrepresented at institutions where scholars face great demands for publishing but have little support for doing their research (such as access to expensive laboratory equipment). It is ethically problematic for institutions to accept or otherwise support individuals who have used research paper mills in the past, adds Stoeger. However, academic institutions usually do not have the technical means or staff to detect such individuals. “Institutions need ways to screen applicants for previous use of research paper mills, and for bibliometric indicators of likely fraud, such as anomalies in citation patterns,” says Stoeger.
Unfortunately, the damage done by out-of-control scientific fraud goes far beyond individual researchers or institutions. The overarching ethical concern is the loss of credibility of science. “We are very worried about the loss of public trust in research,” says Stoeger.
Stacey Kusterbeck is an award-winning contributing author for Relias. She has more than 20 years of medical journalism experience and greatly enjoys keeping on top of constant changes in the healthcare field.
References
1. Richardson RAK, Hong SS, Byrne JA, et al. The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2025;122(32):e2420092122.
2. Joelving F. Did a ‘nasty’ publishing scheme help an Indian dental school win high rankings? Science. Published June 7, 2023. https://www.science.org/content/article/did-nasty-publishing-scheme-help-indian-dental-school-win-high-rankings
