In 2022, byrne and colleagues, including two of us, found that suspicious genetics research, despite the immediate influence of patient care, informs the work of scientists, including clinical examinations. But publishers are often slow to withdraw infected papers, even when they are warned of clear fraud. We have found that 97 percent of the 712 problematic genetics research articles that we have identified were not corrected.
Possible solutions
The Cochrane cooperation has a policy that is excluded from its suspicious studies from its analyzes of medical evidence and develops a tool to recognize problematic medical tests. And publishers have started sharing data and technologies to combat fraud, including image fraud.
Technology startups also offer help. The Argos website, launched in September 2024 by Scitility, a warning service based in Sparks, Nevada, enables authors to check employees for withdrawals or misconduct. Morressier, a scientific conference and communication company in Berlin, offers tools for research integrity. Paper control tools include signals, by research signals and clear skies' papermill alarm based in London.
But Alam acknowledges that the fight against Paper Mills will not be won as long as the flowering demand for papers remains.
Today's commercial publication is part of the problem, said Byrne. Cleaning up the literature is a huge and expensive company. “Or we have to earn money as corrections in such a way that publishers are paid for their work, or forget the publishers and do it themselves,” she said.
There is a fundamental bias in publishing profit motive: “We pay them for accepting articles,” says Bodo Stern, a former editor of the magazine Cell and Chief of Strategic Initiatives at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a non-profit research organization and Financier in Chevy Chase, Maryland. With more than 50,000 magazines on the market, Bad Papers who walked around long enough ultimately find a house, Stern said.
To prevent this, we can stop paying magazines for accepting papers and considering them as public utilities that serve a larger good. “We have to pay for transparent and rigorous quality control mechanisms,” he said.
Peer Review must meanwhile be recognized as a real scientific product, just like the original article, “said Stern. And magazines must make all Peer-Review reports public, even for manuscripts they reject.
This article is re -published from the conversation under a license for Creative Commons. This is a condensed version. Read the full version for more information about how fraudsters around the world use paper factories to enrich themselves and to harm scientific research.
Frederik Joelving is a contributing editor at Retraction Watch; Cyril Labbé is Professor Informatics on the Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA); And Guillaume Cabanac is a professor in Informatics at Institut de Increchche and Informatique de Toulouse.
