This is a new phenomenon and business model exploiting gaps in publishing. The cartel uses fake names to produce AI-written or plagiarised papers. Reference lists contain 100s of paid entries.If papers are retracted, no real authors are punished, and citations still count, even from retracted papers

Excited to be participating in the virtual Research Integrity Week events, by the Researchers Society/Pakistan Economics Frontier, organized by Abbas Aziz, hosted by Dr. Saba Saeed, with @sholtodavid.bsky.social , @abalkina.bsky.social, Najma Memon, and @reeserichardson.bsky.social Starting in 2h

@Abalkina.bsky.social on eerie new papermill strategy #APE2026: invented papers with fake authors & paid for references for H-index padding. Even on retraction, citations persist. Remedy: 1) prepublication integrity screening; 2) remove H-index from Research assemment @Dorassessment.bsky.social

Happy Advent!🎄 Day 24 Ready for a new puzzle? A case from a paper that was published some days ago papermills.tilda.ws/2025advent24 papermills.tilda.ws/advent2025 This is the last case of 2025. I hope you enjoyed the calendar as much as I enjoyed preparing it, and I wish you warm seasonal greetings!

Theatre performances in Berlin are very particular - many of them have political vibes, even when it’s classical repertoire. I was at the opera Don Giovanni, and halfway through there was a notice: Don Ottavio’s aria “Il mio tesoro” would be skipped due to cuts in Berlin’s cultural funding.

Happy Advent! !!!🎄✨ Day 23. Ready for a new puzzle? Today's puzzle is related to journal's inconsistencies. papermills.tilda.ws/2025advent23 papermills.tilda.ws/advent2025

Happy Advent! !!!🎄✨ Day 19. Ready for a new puzzle? Do you see inconsistencies between two tables? papermills.tilda.ws/2025advent19 papermills.tilda.ws/advent2025

Happy Advent! !!!🎄✨ Day 17. Ready for a new puzzle? Another paper-mill paper. Do you see inconsistencies? papermills.tilda.ws/2025advent17 papermills.tilda.ws/advent2025

The last session of the year. We had a funny Mentimeter: what if Santa had a development agency (the course is related to development and development aid). It was fun!

Happy Advent! !!!🎄✨ Day 16. Ready for a new puzzle? Inconsistency case in a paper-mill paper. papermills.tilda.ws/advent2025

Preparing for the last teaching sessions of the year. I do a funny quiz for my students: If Santa ran a development agency, how would he decide who gets support?

Happy Advent! !!!🎄✨ Day 15. Ready for a new puzzle? This is one of my favorite cases of 2025. papermills.tilda.ws/advent2025

Happy Advent! !!!🎄✨ Day 11. Ready for a new puzzle? papermills.tilda.ws/advent2025

Happy Advent! !!!🎄✨ Day 9. Ready for a new puzzle? papermills.tilda.ws/advent2025

Happy Advent! !!!🎄✨ Day 8. Today's puzzle is about figure inconsistencies! Do you spot the problem? papermills.tilda.ws/advent2025

Happy Advent! !!!🎄✨ Day 7. Could you identify any issues in the demographic data? papermills.tilda.ws/advent2025

Happy Advent! !!!🎄✨ Day 6. Today's puzzle is about reference list! Do you spot the problem? papermills.tilda.ws/advent2025

Happy Advent! !!!🎄✨ Day 5. Today's puzzle is about paper mills. papermills.tilda.ws/advent2025

We see a new phenomenon. Fake authors in papers with hundreds of citations. Papers are easy to produce by ChatGPT. Even if a paper is retracted, no punishment to the real authors, but citations still count. Today's puzzle is about a similar case papermills.tilda.ws/2025advent4

Happy Advent! !!!🎄✨ Day 4. Today's puzzle is about new cases and the phenomenon of problematic papers. papermills.tilda.ws/advent2025

Happy Advent! !!!🎄✨ Day 3. Today's puzzle is about hijacked journals. papermills.tilda.ws/advent2025

Happy Advent! !!!🎄✨ Day 2. Today's puzzle is about paper mills' red flags! Do you spot the problem? papermills.tilda.ws/advent2025

Happy Advent! !!!🎄✨ Welcome to a new edition of the Research Integrity Advent Calendar. Each day brings a small challenge: spot the problem, detect inconsistencies, and sharpen your skills. Enjoy the season and the daily puzzles! Day 1. papermills.tilda.ws/advent2025

This invitation to contribute to the J. of S.Health (see a screenshot) with video and PPT materials reminded me of an anecdote. A professor comes to give a lecture about love. Love, he begins, can take many forms. For example, between a man and a woman. Students: Slides, please. 1/2

Berlin Science Week. Oxford-style debate. Should we publish in academic journals?

New descriptive statistics tables in T&F journals produced by a paper mill. Do you notice anything wrong with them? #papermills

I'm very grateful to DomainTools for providing access to their instruments to analyse web domains. Thanks to this tool I have just found two hijacked journals which will be added to the Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker during the next update.

It's already 3 years since I'm looking at Tanu.pro paper mill. Tanu.pro is an email domain that the paper mill used to submit papers. When this fraud was detected, the paper mill abandoned it and it expired. Now I found that the domain is registered again in an anonymous registrar in Reykjavik.

The study which, I believe, is from a paper mill that I'm looking at, publishes this kind of table. Negative values of GDP (in the paper it's GDP but not a growth rate), strange SD values, negative interest rates (which can be in the case of Japan but min should be -0.1 but not -0.03). #papermills

Sightseeing day around Germany! Such wonderful weather, and I found a treasure, the city of Tangermünde, right in the heart of Germany.

Happy to be in the Tagesspiegel office which hosts 100 scientists of Berlin and Brandenburg of 2025.

The paper mill probably forgot to include several sections in the paper, including the data and results. The Methods section mentions a survey that is never described in the paper. Immediately after the methods section comes the conclusion. Yet, the paper was still published.

Finally I get invitations from hijacked journals to publish with them. It will go immediately to Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker. Please, send me more.

I’m honored to be named one of Tagesspiegel’s “100 Researchers of Berlin” for 2025, featured in today’s category “Swimming against the current.” Grateful to be recognized alongside inspiring researchers who challenge convention and push boundaries

There’s a striking pattern among the top journals targeted by an Indian paper mill. All have sharply increased their publication number in recent years. Is this growth driven by publisher goals, a surge in submissions due to AI, or both? #papermills

I found a watermark of an Indian paper mill, which helped me identify 100+ papers over the weekend. So far, 490 papers have been detected. Most authors are from India, China, and Saudi Arabia. Only 4 papers have been retracted. Papers are full of fake data, yet they still get published. #papermills

How many and what kind of mistakes can you spot in this table?

I’m looking at a specific paper mill in India. So far, I have detected 339 papers, 105 of which were published in 2025. Only the biggest publishers are being targeted. Only two papers have been retracted. This is the dashboard of a paper mill. lookerstudio.google.com/reporting/36... #papermills

Catch of the day. Do you find anything wrong here?

This is a great article on paper mills by Lea Wolz (in German). It provides a general overview of paper mills and their impact on science. It gives examples of how fake papers penetrate Cochrane reviews and bias recommendations. Highly recommended! www.quarks.de/gesellschaft... #papermills

Today I find myself in an unusual territory. I will give a talk at the legendary International Mathematical Union in Berlin! I'm very grateful to Prof.Agricola for the invitation to discuss the problem of paper mills.

This is another wake-up call about what is happening with scientific literature, which is being flooded by template papers produced by paper mills. One example is the use of open-access databases like FAERS or NHANES, combined with analyses that rely on biased or incorrect methodologies.

Paper mills discover new dimensions. A Ukrainian one paved the way for sleuthing and published a misconduct report about the vice minister of education. An Indian one offers nursing jobs in Germany. #papermills

Flying to Peer Review Congress 2025! Together with Svetlana Kleiner, I’ll be giving a podium presentation: “Patterns of Paper Mill Papers and Retraction Challenges.” Thrilled to be on-site for the first time! #PRC25

Relaxing from work. Cooked up some buzara mussels.

New paper: Tackling paper mills requires us to prevent future contamination and clean up the past – the case of the journal Bioengineered With @deadneanderthals.bsky.social, @smutclyde.bsky.social, @mortenoxe.bsky.social, @thatsregrettab1.bsky.social, and me www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

A paper that combines #peerreview & cheese... what could be better? Answer: writing said paper with @abalkina.bsky.social @image-integrity.bsky.social & Marie Souliere. Read on to learn how the Swiss Cheese Model could help peer review & #researchintegrity onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Great initiative by Wiley! The publisher has started marking retracted papers in reference lists. When you click on the retraction notice, you can also see the date and reason for the retraction. All publishers should adopt this practice. But also screen references during submission.

My new interview to Forschung&Lehre about misconduct and paper mills. Thank you, Katrin Schmermund for interview and your efforts to make this possible. www.forschung-und-lehre.de/forschung/wi...

Our semester is officially over! This week, we wrapped up with a department workshop where I gave the final talk of the semester on opportunistic data in research integrity studies. Now it’s finally time to enjoy summer! and write grant proposals.