Research findings show that 'large-scale organizations that create fraudulent papers exist,' and that there are 'editors who continue to accept an abnormally high number of fraudulent papers,' creating a serious situation.
A small percentage of academic journals contain fraudulent papers, and sometimes fraud is discovered years after publication. A study published in the Proceedings of
The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and rapidly growing | PNAS
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2420092122
Scientific fraud has become an 'industry,' alarming analysis finds | Science | AAAS
https://www.science.org/content/article/scientific-fraud-has-become-industry-alarming-analysis-finds
Some published papers contain fraudulent content, such as copying experimental images or falsifying data. There has also been a sharp increase in papers containing text and images generated by AI. Papers published in academic journals undergo rigorous screening, and fraudulent papers are supposed to be filtered out before publication, but the reality is that fraudulent papers that slip through the screening process end up being published.
It has also become clear that organized fraud is involved in the process by which fraudulent papers are published in academic journals. For example, on July 29, 2025, Frontiers , a publisher of open access journals, reported that it had discovered a peer review manipulation network composed of Frontiers editors and authors. The discovered organization was involved in 122 papers published in Frontiers academic journals, and also published a total of more than 4,000 papers at seven other publishers.
Frontiers' Research Integrity team uncovers peer review manipulation network
https://www.frontiersin.org/news/2025/07/29/frontiers-research-integrity-team-uncovers-peer-review-manipulation-network
To investigate the actual status of editors involved in misconduct, a research team consisting of researchers from the Free University of Berlin and other institutions selected PLOS ONE and Hindawi as their study subjects, as they are publishers that disclose editor information. They collected information on papers published in PLOS ONE by November 8, 2023, and in Hindawi by April 2, 2024, and compared it with misconduct information posted on the paper feedback platform PubPeer .
The analysis revealed that 33 editors were involved in the publication of papers that were later retracted or criticized at a rate that could not be explained by chance. One editor had 49 of the 79 papers he was responsible for retracted after publication.
It was also discovered that editors involved in the misconduct frequently worked on papers by certain authors. Many of these authors also served as PLOS ONE editors, and there were even cases where PLOS ONE editors worked on each other's papers. A similar trend was observed in Hindawi.
The research team points out the existence of 'paper mills,' organizations that publish fraudulent papers in academic journals. In the graph below, the black line shows the number of published scientific papers, and the red line shows the number of fraudulent papers associated with 'paper mills.' While the number of published papers is on the rise, the number of fraudulent papers produced by paper mills is increasing at an even greater rate. The research team predicts that the number of fraudulent papers will continue to increase sharply in the future.
Renee Hock, head of publication ethics at PLOS ONE, said, 'PLOS ONE has been aware of the existence of fraudulent organizations for some time. We will check whether editors suspected of involvement in misconduct are still serving on editorial boards, and if so, we will launch an investigation.' She also said, 'This study focused on PLOS ONE because PLOS ONE publishes data on editors, but fraudulent paper mills are a problem for the entire scientific industry,' emphasizing that this is not just a problem for PLOS ONE.
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in Science, Posted by log1o_hf