Of late, many academic institutions and authors are coming under a cloud for research misconducts.1 The bulk of them go unnoticed.2 Research integrity gets compromised by several factors. Researchers under pressure face challenges in data management, authorship issues, and most importantly deadlines, as most are in the rat race of metrics to boost their rankings for advancement of “self” instead of advancement of science.3 Workshops in research and publication ethics are confined to theory in the face of pressure to publish or perish.4 In this environment of academic anarchy, predatory journals evolved, misusing the open access model. This has evolved into a strong exploitative industry opposing all and sundry crossing their path. Most notable is the case of Jeffrey Beall, who was heavily targeted by intimidation, legal threats, and harassment by predatory publishers.5 Beall, who was a librarian at the University of Denver, Colorado, invented the term “predatory journals” and maintained the “Beall’s list” of unscrupulous publishers. The Beall’s list disappeared in January 2027, probably succumbing to “pressure and politics.”6 Over the decade since, there have been rapid “advances” in predatory publishing, with the scientific literature getting more polluted with artificial intelligence (AI)-driven paper mills and supportive services offering choice of papers and authorships on payment. While this malaise is universal, countries with limited resources for research, trying to catch up fast in international rankings, fall prey more often to these publication misconducts.7 Universities and academic institutions put unrealistic publication targets for students and faculty. While research is hard enough for senior academics, one should appreciate how difficult it would be for students and junior faculty who are still coming to grips with their disciplines. Paper mills, unscrupulous underground networks providing low-quality fabricated research manuscripts on payment to authors, have evolved in this environment of “publish or perish.” They produce papers prolifically using fake or fabricated datasets.8 Generative AI could boost the production of such counterfeit scientific papers, making them difficult to detect.9 Pushed to the wall by unrealistic research and publication targets, taking resort to brokers of paper mills threatens to become the new norm for desperate medical residents and faculty. Academic accreditation bodies, both at the international and national levels, have to take a call for bringing about the much-needed paradigm shift. As long as academic institutions are rated by quantitative metrics based on research publications, the fake publishing industry will thrive. The sheer volume of fake papers will smother genuine research work, making it difficult, if not impossible, to separate the wheat from the chaff. Data availability statement Not applicable. Author contribution AB was responsible for all stages of preparing the paper from concept, writing, revising, and approving the final version.
Amitav Banerjee (Wed,) studied this question.