We have been approached via email by a company promoting authorship for sale. The email describes the service as providing 'co-authorship' of an existing article that has been submitted for publication in an indexed journal. The articles cover a range of disciplines and the company claims a high success rate for publication.
Question for COPE Council:
- What steps should publishers take in cases of such overt promotion of paper mills?
The Forum noted that approaches like this are increasingly common, either targeted to the editorial office, or directed at editors in their capacity as researchers. One option is simply to ignore them (indeed, replying may give the companies involved more information which will help them to prepare more convincing scams). Alternatively, editors could choose to take more active steps, such as circulating the emails to their editorial boards and publishers in order to increase awareness of the problem. They could also state clearly in their author guidelines and on their websites that the journal does not work with third parties in this way. If they are experiencing a concerted campaign of emails they could consider publishing a note on their website to warn potential authors about unsolicited emails offering authorship services. Editorial staff can be reminded to look out for requests to change authorship late in the process, as it can indicate paper mill activity. If such a company is using the journal’s logo without permission, then the journal could consider taking brand infringement action. In the future more countries may decide to make it illegal to advertise paper mills, as they have done with essay mills, but this is not a recourse at the present time.
In terms of process, two courses of action were proposed. First, that journals follow COPE’s advice on paper mills (and supplementary advice, where concerns are raised at scale) to deal with suspected cases. Second, that they collect examples of direct approaches from these organisations and share them centrally, for example, via the STM Integrity Hub. Titles of specific articles being offered for sale could also be extracted from the organisations’ websites and cross-checked for duplicate submission using tools like those being developed by STM. This would provide evidence which could lead to an industry response.
It seems unlikely that action against individual companies will be of much utility, even if it were possible, as more will surface rapidly. Young researchers in particular are often unaware of the status and intentions of these services, and may feel pressure to use them in order to publish. Education is therefore a useful approach to take in order to reduce the use of such services.