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 Only 4 papers have been retracted.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.

Good morning!

Jana Christofer and I wrote a piece on #papermills for Laborjournal. We discuss challenges of paper mills and AI for scientific publishing. Science needs immediate solutions to correct it and prevent it from massively produced fraud. @image-integrity.bsky.social www.laborjournal.de/rubric/essay...

My new contribution to Nature, a review of the book Unreliable by C.Szabo. The book explores the irreproducibility crisis in biomedical research and engagingly addresses both structural problems in science and scientific fraud. Full or irony, caricatures & common sense www.nature.com/articles/d41...

The PRC program is now online! Patterns of #PaperMill Papers and Retraction Challenges from @abalkina.bsky.social ‪@springernature.com is part of the #ResearchMisconduct and Integrity session Learn more and register at peerreviewcongress.org#PaperMill#ResearchMisconduct #scientificfraud #peerreview @bmj.com @jama.com

Two websites, one journal. The Journal of Informetrics has been hijacked. This is not just any journal, it's a well-known title published by Elsevier. More journals from reputable publishers are being hijacked since recently. Guess which screenshot belongs to the original journal? HT: Paul Donner

Great panel on publication ethics at ECEIA 2025- Anna Abalkina, Bernhard Sabel, Laura Wilson and Sarah Eaton. The level of fraud and corruption is so worrying... Do we need a science police? #researchintegrity #publishingethics #ECEIA2025

A new open-access Springer journal brand Discover, has absolute resemblance to MDPI and its strategy. A shocking new analysis by @paolocrosetto.bsky.social and other members of the Strain Team the-strain-on-scientific-publishing.github.io/website/post... HT: @deevybee.bsky.social

I've been investigating a specific Indian paper mill and have identified 289 fraudulent papers published by major publishers. Despite clear signs of misconduct, only two have been retracted. I've added a retraction tracker to the mill's dashboard. lookerstudio.google.com/reporting/36... #papermills

A very important initiative. it's useful for all scientists to be aware of what kind mistakes and fraud can be found in scientific papers when one reads them, cites or peer reviews.

TH: @albertomartin.bsky.social

Question. I see a lot of papers with the same design of a Figure (see the picture). Is there a specific software for drawing this kind of figure? I wonder why there are similar figures from different authors that are not connected with each other.

Last week I wrote about the fake journal Science of Law indexed in Scopus. Elsevier said they’d delete the content, and did, but in a mosaic way. They removed 57 papers (fake + real) but left 10: 6 from the fake archive, 4 new ones. I’ll never understand Scopus or its view on research integrity.

Hot job alert on a HH website. Looking for smb to rewrite ChatGPT.

Another paper from an Indian paper mill published in Current Psychology (Springer). Can you spot problems?

This is a must-read. Csaba Szabó, the author of Unreliable, was approached by a paper mill, and he decided to conduct a sting operation. He documented how paper mills operate. forbetterscience.com/2025/05/19/a...

Last week I reported on the journal Science of Law, which was found to be fake (fake editorial board, non-existent authors of archived papers, etc.). An Elsevier spokesperson informed that the decision had been made to remove all of the journal’s content from Scopus, yet it is still there.

I wrote this text in 2016,when Medinsky was Minister of Culture. Now he represents Russia in peace talks in Istanbul. Despite plagiarism in his PhD theses, Ca’ Foscari made him an honorary fellow. Here's how he received the degree (In Russian but can be Google-translated tinyurl.com/3c9nnpjh

Scopus has indexed predatory and hijacked journals, journals targeted by paper mills, or transferred to fraudulent publishers. Now it even indexes a fake journal with fake editorial board, a falsely named publisher, and papers written by non-existent researchers. retractionwatch.com/2025/05/16/s...

I wonder how a paper with such data can pass editors and reviewers? Do you notice anything wrong here? #papermills

I've created a public link to the dashboard on a paper mill I'm currently investigating. It's possible to track the dynamics of paper mill identification. Later, I'll add a reaction profile, which is currently at zero. lookerstudio.google.com/reporting/36... #papermills

This is another paper allegedly originating from a paper mill. Do you notice anything wrong? #papermills

How do #papermills evolve? Which publishers and journals do they target? This dashboard tracks an Altra paper mill identified in April 2025. Major publishers have been notified. Many papers remain undetected, and others are under revision. I will continue to track progress.

Again a paper-mill paper. I wonder what has happened if paper mills normally had a template. Nobody has read the paper if such a typo has been published. #papermills

What is AI’s impact on paper mill production? Using the example of a single paper mill with 200+ papers, we can see a significant increase in 2024. There is clear evidence of ChatGPT use: a large number of short sections, bullet points, and AI-typical literature review. #papermills