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<\/p>\nHow big is science\u2019s fake-paper problem?<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
Her name is one of a network of 26 fictitious authors and reviewers that had infiltrated four mathematics journals belonging to the London-based publisher Springer Nature.<\/p>\n
These sham scholars were created by a paper mill<\/a>, a company that manipulates peer reviews and sells fake research papers to researchers looking to boost their profile. By inventing a stable of fake scientists, paper mills can create a ready supply of publications<\/a> and favourable peer reviews, ensuring that more of the mills\u2019 submissions get published. This tactic increases their output and credibility for paying customers.<\/p>\n This particular paper mill used two dozen fake authors and reviewers to publish 55 articles \u2014 one of the biggest such cases reported. After a lengthy investigation, Springer Nature, which also publishes Nature, retracted all three papers. (Nature\u2019s news team is editorially independent of its publisher.)<\/p>\n Other publishers have discovered similar fakes<\/a>, with fictitious reviewers being more frequent than fake authors. Researchers acknowledge that this type of fraud probably isn\u2019t a hugely common problem, but that the true scale is unknown. \u201cWe\u2019re just flying completely blind here,\u201d says Reese Richardson, a metascientist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.<\/p>\n Paper mills and individuals can also impersonate real researchers, stealing their identities to make submissions seem legitimate and increase their chances of getting published<\/a>.<\/p>\n Most publishers already check author identity before accepting submissions. Some rely on simple checks, such as whether a scientist is using an e-mail from a recognized institution. Others use several tests. Frontiers journals, for instance, cross-reference researcher records and look for previous publications. They also ask authors to confirm contributions made by others listed on the paper.<\/p>\n Journal targeted by paper mill still grappling with the aftermath years later<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n But verifying identity is difficult because journal editors, reviewers and authors typically communicate remotely through e-mail or submission systems. Scientific publishing runs mostly on trust. There are ongoing discussions about whether to adopt more stringent measures \u2014 for example, requiring use of institutional e-mails or logging in with a system that uses university credentials \u2014 and even asking for documents such as passports or driving licences.<\/p>\n But such identity checks risk excluding scholars who do not work at a known institution, as well as early-career researchers and individuals in low- and middle-income countries who do not have institutional e-mails, says Adya Misra, associate director of research integrity at Sage Publications in Liverpool, UK. Journal editors might not feel comfortable playing \u2018immigration officers\u2019, checking identities for every submission. \u201cWhat we lack as an industry is standards on what we consider to be a verified researcher,\u201d says Misra.<\/p>\n Make-believe mathematicians<\/p>\n In 2018, a reader spotted a pair of flawed and nearly identical papers that had been published in two mathematics journals the year before, and alerted the journal staff. The publisher of the journals, Springer Nature, discovered that both articles had used fictitious reviewers.<\/p>\n That was only the start. The fake reviewers had appeared as authors on earlier papers (some journals, including the two that published the flawed papers, allow authors to recommend their own peer reviewers). So once both made-up names became published authors, they began to be repeatedly suggested for reviewing.<\/p>\n Between 2013 and 2020, the paper mill published 55 papers with the help of 13 fictitious reviewers and 13 fake authors, who were supposedly based all over the world.<\/p>\n Illustration by Adam W\u00f3jcicki<\/p>\n Most of those fake authors appeared on only one article, but were suggested as reviewers 68 times. The other 13 fake personas had no publication history and were invited to review 25 times. When Springer Nature contacted the institutions that supposedly employed the researchers, those universities confirmed that no such people had ever been on their staff.<\/p>\n The fact that fake scientists with a publication history were invited to review papers more often than were those without explains why paper mills would bother to publish papers under fake names in the first place, says Tim Kersjes, head of research integrity at Springer Nature in Dordrecht, the Netherlands.<\/p>\n It took Springer Nature two years to investigate this ring of fake scientists, eventually finding that they were probably the work of a China-based paper mill and retracting all of the affected papers by early 2021.<\/p>\n \u201cScience has always been predicated on trust, and, at the time, awareness of identity fraud in peer review was limited. Such manipulation was rare, and editors were less alert to the risks,\u201d Kersjes says. \u201cWe now have much more rigorous checks and editor training and awareness.\u201d Kersjes presented his team\u2019s investigation last month at the 10th International Congress on Peer Review and Scientific Publication in Chicago, Illinois.<\/p>\n Fictitious personas are just one example of identity fraud. Individuals and paper mills can also impersonate real scientists, posing as authors, reviewers or guest editors to slip poor-quality or fabricated work into journals (see \u2018Finding fakes\u2019). In work published earlier this year1<\/a>, software engineer Diomidis Spinellis at the Athens University of Economics and Business uncovered 48 articles in one journal that he suspected were generated by artificial intelligence (AI). One of them listed him as an author without his knowledge. Others named researchers at prestigious universities as co-authors, but used wrong or non-institutional e-mail addresses, and some of those researchers had died years before the publications.<\/p>\n Source: Ref. 4<\/p>\n Even working institutional e-mail addresses are not a foolproof test for identity fraud. A preprint2<\/a> posted in August identified 94 fake profiles on OpenReview.net \u2014 a platform used to manage peer-review workflows. All but two had e-mails that were tied to well-known universities; the remaining e-mails came from institutions that had already closed.<\/p>\n The analysis \u2014 done by a team including researchers from OpenReview \u2014 found that imposters created e-mail aliases of genuine institutional e-mails. These aliases forwarded incoming messages into e-mail accounts that the imposters controlled.<\/p>\n Checking up<\/p>\n It is unclear whether the number of cases of identity fakes in the scholarly publishing is growing. Elena Vicario, head of research integrity at Frontiers in Lausanne, Switzerland, says the situation is rare in Frontiers journals and typically involves impersonation of real individuals.<\/p>\n Richardson says that other forms of malpractice are probably of more concern. \u201cMy gut instinct is that people engaging in unethical or unscrupulous behaviour under their own name is a far bigger issue than people using somebody else\u2019s name to engage in unscrupulous behaviour,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, cases of fictitious and hijacked personas continue to surface, and some people worry that AI might worsen the problem. So pressure is mounting on publishers to tighten their checks.<\/p>\n One platform publishers are increasingly using is the Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID), which was launched in 2012 as a free identification service that individuals can use to record their academic papers and other research activities<\/a>. Some 10 million researchers use ORCID at least once a year, and major publishers require submitting authors to include their unique ORCID 16-digit identifier. Registered researchers carry their identifier for the entirety of their career, even if they change their job or institute.<\/p>\n ORCID does not, however, provide proof of identity. Anyone can sign up on the platform and there is currently no systematic mechanism to prevent or remove duplicate accounts.<\/p>\n But the platform does ask its almost 1,500 member organizations, which include publishers and funders, to contribute to its records by confirming affiliations, works, funding or peer review. These verified entries \u2014 referred to as trust markers \u2014 show up as green ticks on researchers\u2019 profiles.<\/p>\n Europe\u2019s largest paper mill? 1,500 research articles linked to Ukrainian network<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n \u201cIt is a community trust network,\u201d says Tom Demeranville, the UK-based product director at ORCID, which is a non-profit organization in Bethesda, Maryland. \u201cIf everyone does this, we have a very helpful system for everyone.\u201d About 5.7 million ORCID accounts contain at least one trust marker.<\/p>\n But some publishers request ORCID identifiers for only the lead authors on a submission3<\/a>, which limits how effective the system can be.<\/p>\n ORCID might therefore work better when combined with other strategies. That was one conclusion of an expert task force on identity checks set up in late 2023 by the International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers (STM), a trade organization in The Hague, the Netherlands.<\/p>\n The goal was \u201clooking at other tactics to bolster research integrity\u201d beyond screening the manuscript, says Hylke Koers, chief information officer at STM Solutions, STM\u2019s operations arm based in Utrecht, the Netherlands.<\/p>\n The task force has published two reports on its findings4<\/a>,5<\/a>. The latest, posted in March, recommends a framework that combines indicators of risk and trust that publishers could apply to determine how much confidence to place on identity verifications5<\/a>. Any approach must accommodate multiple solutions because otherwise it risks wrongly excluding individuals, says Koers, who helped to compile both reports. \u201cWe don\u2019t believe there is a single silver bullet here,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Alongside ORCID trust markers, the report suggests vetting institutional e-mail addresses and confirming affiliations through institutional sign-in systems. The framework also offers fall-back options such as making phone or video calls to the researcher or university, or requesting identity certificates or passports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Beatriz Ychussie\u2019s career in mathematics seemed to be going really well. She worked at Roskilde University in Denmark…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":520186,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[34339,3965,3966,20188,70,3016,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-520185","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-ethics","9":"tag-humanities-and-social-sciences","10":"tag-multidisciplinary","11":"tag-publishing","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-scientific-community","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115419096578903366","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=520185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/520186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/d41586-025-03341-9_51556596.jpg\"\/)
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