Publication and collaboration anomalies in academic papers originating from a paper mill: evidence from a Russia-based paper mill
It addresses the problem of fraudulent authorship in academia, particularly for publishers and researchers, but is incremental as it focuses on a specific paper mill.
This study detected at least 434 academic papers potentially linked to a Russia-based paper mill by analyzing 1,009 offers from 2019-2021, estimating the value of coauthorship slots at $6.5 million.
This study attempts to detect papers originating from the Russia-based paper mill International publisher LLC. A total of 1009 offers published during 2019-2021 on the 123mi.ru website were analysed. The study allowed us to identify at least 434 papers that are potentially linked to the paper mill including one preprint, a duplication paper and 15 republications of papers erroneously published in hijacked journals. Evidence of suspicious provenance from the paper mill is provided: matches in title, number of coauthorship slots, year of publication, country of the journal, country of a coauthorship slot and similarities of abstracts. These problematic papers are coauthored by scholars associated with at least 39 countries and submitted both to predatory and reputable journals. This study also demonstrates collaboration anomalies and the phenomenon of suspicious collaboration in questionable papers and examines the predictors of the Russia-based paper mill. The value of coauthorship slots offered by International Publisher LLC in 2019-2021 is estimated at $6.5 million. Since the study analysed a particular paper mill, it is likely that the number of papers with forged authorship is much higher.