Busted: Chinese scholars use ghostwriters and bogus referees to publish academic papers in international journals
Many of the mainland academics used pseudonyms to write reviews of their own papers or paid other people up to 100,000 yuan (HK$121,000) to write their reports for them
More than 100 academic papers published in international journals by Chinese scholars have been invalidated this year after they were found to have been ghostwritten or verified by bogus referees.
An investigation by China Association for Science and Technology, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and other mainland institutions found many scholars used pseudonyms to write reviews of their own papers or paid other people up to 100,000 yuan (HK$121,000) to write the papers for them.
Three publishers acted after irregularities were uncovered in more than 100 Chinese academic papers, Xinhua news agency said.
Elsevier, a leading publisher of technical, scientific and medical academic journals including The Lancet and Cell, had invalidated nine papers by mainland scholars this year, which were featured in its publications.
In August, Springer, another academic journal publisher, invalidated 64 papers that it had been published in 10 of journals, most of which had been submitted by mainland academics.
The British-based BioMed Central invalidated 43 papers in March, 41 of which had been written by mainland academics.
Xinhua quoted the publishers as saying that all the papers were invalidated because of examples of “fake peer reviews provided by a third-party institute”.