article | Feng Lifei
Dental experts publish papers in the field of mechanical engineering , and experts in the fields of medicine, economy, and finance publish papers in fluid mechanics related papers... Can normal scholars really do cross-border research like this?
Recently, the well-known open access journal "Scientific ReportsScientific Reports) expressed "editorial concern" to two papers in the journal. The main reason is the author's identity issue.
"China Science Daily " reporters found that most of the author groups of the two articles came from Indonesian , Iran , and Russia, one of which also involved a Chinese work. At the same time, both articles have the author's professional field and the topic of the published paper "There is no connection between the wind and horses and the bulls". A few months ago, a similar reason also led to the retraction of another paper in the journal.
Berlin University of Berlin, Germany A sociologist Anna Abalkina mentioned in a study published in March this year that there is a brokerage company in Russia that specializes in selling paper signatures. According to the location of the signature and the impact factor of the journal, its author status has different pricing, with the fees ranging from 1,700 yuan to nearly 50,000 yuan. The location of the first author is usually more expensive, starting at 3,000 yuan.
It is reported that the territory of such transnational businesses has been expanding in recent years, and related papers have penetrated into journals under large academic publishing institutions, making journal editors unpredictable.
Falsification of author identity: Two articles are concerned, one article was withdrawn
According to its official website, "Scientific Reports" is the fifth largest cited journal in the world and has been cited more than 690,000 times in 2021. However, some academic whistleblowers believe that the journal may have been targeted by institutions that "buy and sell author identities."
htmlOn July 14, the "Scientific Report" expressed concerns about a paper on numerical research on nanofluid flow (hereinafter referred to as Article A). Its corresponding author Meisam Babanezhad listed institutions are the School of Mechanical Engineering, Islamic Azad University, Iran and the Department of the Sanderman Industrial Strategy Company in Tehran.
html Article A expressed concern on July 14. The first author of the paper is from the Data Science and Computer Intelligence major of Medan Regional University in Indonesia; the second and third authors are from the Computer Science and Technology University of North Sumatra. The fourth, fifth and sixth authors are from the Russian fields of medicine, economy and finance. The corresponding author is from Iran.
Although it is easy to retrieve at the University of Azad, the so-called Sanderman Industrial Strategy Company does not seem to have any clues about its existence on the Internet.
Sandman is just the name of a region in Iran. The website of "Retraction Observation" found 13 "Sandman" related entries in the publishing database, including chapters from two books and 11 journal papers.
where Babanezhad is the co-author of all these journal papers. What's strange is that his mailing address on the ORCID website is Duy Tan University, not an Iranian agency.
Several other authors of this paper also attracted attention.
For example, Mariya Kuznetsova is a doctor at the First Medical University of Sedonov, Moscow; Andrey Leonidovich Poltarykhin comes from the agricultural management field of Plekhanov University of Economics, Moscow; Vadim V. Ponkratov comes from the Russian Federation University of Finance. They have never published any papers related to nanofluids and particles in the past.
In response to this, Rafal Marszalek, editor-in-chief of "Scientific Reports", said, "A reader contacted us and expressed concern that some authors' expertise seems to be inconsistent with the content of the paper. We fed back the questions to the authors, and after receiving their explanation, we issued an editorial concern statement."
This statement warned readers: there are signs of irregularity in the identity of the authors of A, and that the professional knowledge of some authors does not match the subject of the paper has attracted attention. Although the authors provided an explanation for adding other authors during the paper submission process, the contributions of all authors were not documented in detail.
Babanezhad and the other four authors of A text did not agree with the editor's concern statement, while Kuznetsova and Poltarykhin did not respond to the letters edited by the journal.
It is worth noting that in February this year, members of the A-text team published another paper on electricity price forecasting in the "Scientific Report" (hereinafter referred to as "B"), which has been withdrawn due to doubts about plagiarism and author contribution.
On February 10, 2022, the B article was removed from the same work as the B article and the A article, both of which are Rahmad Syah from the field of data science and computer intelligence at Medan Regional University.
More than that. On July 5, the "Scientific Report" also expressed similar concerns to Article A on another study on the use of molecular dynamics to simulate carbon nanoparticles to improve the mechanical properties of conventional concrete (hereinafter referred to as Article C).
The first and corresponding author of this article is Zhao Liang, a teacher at the School of Civil Engineering, Changjiang Normal University. Other authors come from the fields of mechanical engineering or computers in Iran, Indonesia and Russia. Among them, the fifth author Pavel Kamenskov is a dentist at the First National Medical University of Moscow.
After receiving the editor’s concern letter, Davood Toghraie, the corresponding author of C article, agreed to the editor’s concern, and no other authors responded.
7-5 C article
" Experts from dentistry published papers in the field of mechanical engineering, and experts from the fields of economics, finance and medicine published papers in fluid mechanics. Imagine how far between these topics and the author's expertise. Don't you think this seems to be buying and selling author's identity?" Alexander Magazinov, an academic anti-counterfeiting "detective" and Moscow Skolkovo Institute of Technology, questioned.
The Scientific Report did not respond to this view. However, "Retraction Observation" stated that many recent clues indicate that these manuscripts involved are related to such academic fraud. The price of the "author identity transaction" starts at 3,000 yuan for the first time. The paper is put into business by name
Magazinov refers to "author identity transaction".
In 2019, "Retraction Observation" exposed a Russian brokerage company, claiming that it had served as an agent for more than 10,000 researchers in more than 2,000 papers. Subsequently, professional information consulting service agency Clarivate issued a letter of cessation to it, but this did not have any impact on its business.
Since then, Anna Abalkina, a sociologist at the Liberal University of Berlin, Germany, has been following the website run by the company (www.123mi.ru). She analyzed the company's "thriving" business in a study published in preprint server arXiv in March this year.
By analyzing more than 1,000 ads posted on the website, she found that at least 419 ads might match manuscripts that later appeared in dozens of different journals.
More than 100 identified papers were published in 68 journals operated by well-known publishers, most of which were professional publications.
Abalkina said that in the recent contracts signed by the website, the number of Russian authors exceeded that of other countries. The price of its author identity depends on its position in the author list and the influencing factor of the journal. The cost ranges from 1,700 yuan to nearly 50,000 yuan. The location of the first author is usually more expensive, with a price starting from 3,000 yuan. Based on relevant statistics, Abalkina estimates that the company has earned more than 43 million yuan from 2019 to 2021.
Science magazine has contacted the company several times, which claims it is based in Moscow and has offices in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Iran. Its LinkedIn homepage shows that its editor is Ukrainian linguistics scholar Ksenia Badziun.
Recently, Retraction Observation also found two other institutions similar to Russian companies: Iran-based website Teziran.org and Latvian science publisher SIA. They all claim to be able to sell authorship and provide ready-made article publishing services on a variety of topics.
The countries where the authors of the aforementioned Scientific Report are located are also surprisingly similar, including Russia, Iran and Indonesia.Some experts believe that it is most likely the location of the "paper factory" that sells authorship identity.
So, how do author identity transactions avoid the inspection of journal reviewers?
Editor-in-chief of Clarivian Database Web of Science Nandita Quaderi believes that its operating strategy may have exploited a vulnerability in the publishing process, which allows the author to add other people's names after the manuscript is accepted. This allows some authors to inform the author of the paper to the identity trading website after the paper manuscript is received, and they can sell the right to sign the paper to the outside world.
However, some experts pointed out that some bottomless predatory journals may also be involved in the paper trading. The above-mentioned Russian website stated blatantly that the website has shared relevant income with some journals to ensure its participation in the program.
As Abalkina said, the scale and shamelessness of this operation are unimaginable. What concerns more scientists is that these papers that fake author identities will undermine public confidence in science.
It is hard to prevent and difficult to curb the industry
In response to the phenomenon of author identity trading, some journal publishers said that they are investigating some papers that have attracted attention and strengthen the review of the publishing process.
"'Paper Factory' is not good for the research and publishing community." Chris Graf, director of research integrity at Springer Nature, said that in addition to investigating individual cases and withdrawing problematic papers, they have been reviewing the publishing process and investing in technology to help identify attempts to manipulate their publishing systems.
Publishing Ethics Committee and the International Medical Journal Editorial Committee have also issued guidance to help journal editors prevent the purchase of author identity. They suggest that editors should ask authors who wish to add names after submitting the manuscript, providing their respective contributions and signature permissions for all attribution authors.
At present, it is still challenging to let journal editors find authors with related fraud before the paper is published.
Abalkina said that in order to make the transaction more concealed, many paper factories have confidential terms. Even if some papers are confirmed to have transactions in authorship, the relevant authors will not report it to the truth.
In addition, in order to avoid editorial review, international publishers involved in paper trading have adopted a strategy that no longer repeats publishing for the same journal, which makes it difficult for editors to detect some abnormalities.
But she said there are also clues to discover these behaviors, such as the author of a paper coming from multiple unrelated academic departments, which means they are unlikely to cooperate in reality. In addition, the mismatch between the author's expertise and the subject of the paper manuscript is also one of the clues.
Related information:
https://retractionwatch.com/2022/07/19/papers-in-scientific-reports-and-their-expressions-of-concern-raise-questions/#more-125271
https://www.nature.com/srep/aboutml3
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-16513-8
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-06630-9
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-06630-9
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-99616-y#author-information
https://retractionwatch.com/2021/09/07/introducing-two-sites-that-claim-to-sell-authorships-on-scientific-papers/
https://www.science.org/content/article/russian-website-peddles-authorships-linked-reputable-journals
https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2112/2112.13322.pdf
