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  • NEWS FEATURE

The fight against fake-paper factories that churn out sham science

Some publishers say they are battling industrialized cheating. A Nature analysis examines the ‘paper mill’ problem — and how editors are trying to cope.
By
  1. Holly Else
  2. Richard Van Noorden
Cartoon of researchers looking at a stack of papers with Western Blots. A magnifying glass shows the blots are tadpoles.

Illustration by Ana Kova

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When Laura Fisher noticed striking similarities between research papers submitted to RSC Advances, she grew suspicious. None of the papers had authors or institutions in common, but their charts and titles looked alarmingly similar, says Fisher, the executive editor at the journal. “I was determined to try to get to the bottom of what was going on.”

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Nature 591, 516-519 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00733-5

References

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Supplementary Information

  1. Nature analysis of papers alleged to come from paper mills

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