Mastodawn

Next up, a networking event for people working on #papermills, where all participants (sleuths, meta scientists, research integrity specialists at publishers, computational scientists) can introduce themselves to others. And Jennifer Byrne brought Tim Tams! #WCRI2026

DGI e.V., Frankfurt am Main Apr 29

📢 Online-Veranstaltung: „Wissenschaft zwischen Wahrheit und Fake – Wenn der Publikationswahn die Demokratie angreift"

🗓 Di, 12.05.2026, 17–19 Uhr per BBB

💻 https://talk.hshl.de/b/for-leg-xnu-btx

Paper Mills, KI-Fälschungen, „Publish or Perish": Wie schützen wir die Integrität der Forschung?

Mit Dr. Jasmin Schmitz (ZB MED), Prof. Dr. Irma Rybnikova & Prof. Dr. Jörg Meyer (HSHL).

Bitte Anmeldung per Mail: [email protected]

#Wissenschaftskommunikation #OpenScience #ResearchIntegrity #PaperMills #dgiinfo

Wissenschaft zwischen Wahrheit und Fake

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petersuber Apr 29

Update. Related:

"Opening Pandora's box: Paper mills in conference proceedings."
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.22458

From the abstract: "This study aims to identify papers in conference proceedings whose titles have been offered for sale on social media platforms. We collected more than 4,000 unique publication offers from more than 200 social media channels and used semi-automated methods along with human assessment to match offers with papers published in IEEE conference proceedings. We identified 1,720 papers in 286 IEEE conference proceedings, accounting for up to 23.51% of an individual conference. These problematic papers are co-authored by more than 6,500 researchers from over 3,500 affiliations in 55 countries."

#Misconduct #PaperMills #ScholComm

Opening Pandora's box: Paper mills in conference proceedings

Paper mills are a growing threat to the integrity of science, yet their penetration in conference proceedings remains underexplored despite conferences being more important than journals in some scientific subfields. This study aims to identify papers in conference proceedings whose titles have been offered for sale on social media platforms. We collected more than 4,000 unique publication offers from more than 200 social media channels and used semi-automated methods along with human assessment to match offers with papers published in IEEE conference proceedings. We identified 1,720 papers in 286 IEEE conference proceedings, accounting for up to 23.51% of an individual conference. These problematic papers are co-authored by more than 6,500 researchers from over 3,500 affiliations in 55 countries. The identified papers demonstrate collaboration anomalies, high diversity of affiliations per paper, citation manipulation, a predominance of six-author papers, and content-based irregularities. Our findings show that paper mills are a large, organized, and often public market that commercializes scientific misconduct, not limited to papers, but infiltrating multiple parts of the research ecosystem.

arXiv.org

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petersuber Apr 29

Update. You can now see the preprint itself, on #arXiv.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.24576

From the abstract: "We assemble BuyTheBy, a large, annotated dataset of timestamped, text-based paper mill advertisements from seven businesses operating out of seven different countries. The dataset consists of 18,710 individual advertisements, of which 15,839 have prices listed. Among these there are 20,598 positions listed as for sale on 5,567 unique products in 14 different product categories with 51,812 timestamped price data points."

#Misconduct #PaperMills #ScholComm

BuyTheBy: A dataset of 18,710 text-based paper mill advertisements with 51,812 timestamped prices

The study of paper mills and similar businesses operating in the market for academic and education fraud services is frustrated by the lack of market price data on their various offerings. Here, we assemble BuyTheBy, a large, annotated dataset of timestamped, text-based paper mill advertisements from seven businesses operating out of seven different countries. The dataset consists of 18,710 individual advertisements, of which 15,839 have prices listed. Among these there are 20,598 positions listed as for sale on 5,567 unique products in 14 different product categories with 51,812 timestamped price data points. We perform elementary analysis of this dataset to demonstrate its utility for quantitative understanding of markets for academic fraud services and suggest future use cases.

arXiv.org

petersuber Apr 26

"Thousands of shady ads sell paper authorship for cash, large-scale investigation finds."
https://www.science.org/content/article/thousands-shady-ads-sell-paper-authorship-cash-large-scale-investigation-finds

PS: This article from _Science_ reports important news about paper mills. But apart from that, note that it draws from an #arXiv preprint that hasn't been released yet. It's a preprint preprint, and from _Science_. A nice example of the ongoing #ScholComm transformation.

#Misconduct #PaperMills

Tuwort - Linguistik-Podcast Apr 23

Bevor wir zwei spannende Sonderfolgen veröffentlichen - hier der Hinweis auf Folge 32 des #Tuwort-#Podcast!

Die Themen:
- Das Ausmaß wissenschaftlicher #Papermills: Ein Spamfilter gegen Papiermühlen?
- Schnauze voll!? Können #Hunde oder #Katzen besser Wörter lernen?

Andiskutiert:
- Emotionale Nähe durch KI
- Unterschriften-Bschiss in der Schweiz
- Ostdeutsche Körperlichkeit

https://www.tuwort.com/index.php/2026/03/31/tuwort-32/

Viel Spaß beim Hören!

#linguistik #sprachwissenschaft #wisskomm

tuwort #32

Der Linguistik-Podcast: Von Papiermühlen, Katzen und Hunden Unterschriften-Bschiss Gibt es eine ostdeutsche Körperlichkeit? Wie KI emotionale Nähe schafft Gegenwind für Papiermühlen: Ein Spamfilter solls richten Schnauze voll!? Können Hunde oder Katzen besser Wörter lernen?

tuwort

Tuwort Podcast Apr 23

Bevor wir zwei spannende Sonderfolgen veröffentlichen - hier der Hinweis auf Folge 32 des #Tuwort-#Podcast!

Die Themen:
- Das Ausmaß wissenschaftlicher #Papermills: Ein Spamfilter gegen Papiermühlen?
- Schnauze voll!? Können #Hunde oder #Katzen besser Wörter lernen?

Andiskutiert:
- Emotionale Nähe durch KI
- Unterschriften-Bschiss in der Schweiz
- Ostdeutsche Körperlichkeit

https://www.tuwort.com/index.php/2026/03/31/tuwort-32/

Viel Spaß beim Hören!

#linguistik #sprachwissenschaft #wisskomm

tuwort #32

tuwort

Serhii Nazarovets Apr 1

Our new 📄 in Current Alzheimer Research looks at a strange, and worrying, phenomenon in scientific writing: tortured phrases. Instead of blood-brain barrier, some papers use bizarre alternatives like blood-brain obstruction or blood-cerebrum boundary.

https://doi.org/10.2174/0115672050460224260206052444

These are not just language errors, they can signal deeper issues such as weak #PeerReview or even #PaperMills.

#OpenScience #ResearchIntegrity #Bibliometrics #Neuroethics #AcademicPublishing

Gerrit Heim Mar 16

Ermüdend über #PaperMills und Untergang des wiss. Publikationsystems zu lesen. Dahinter steckt eine Engführung auf das kaputte lebens- und naturwissenschaftliche #Publikationssystem. Das war schon vor #KI und hinüber und kippt jetzt endgültig. In den #Geisteswissenschaften kann ich alle diese Beobachtungen nicht wiedererkennen. Die sind aber auch Wissenschaft. Die viel bemängelte Unsichtbarkeit in den Metriken ist da mehr Segen als Fluch.

Anlass: https://b-i-t-online.de/heft/2026-01-reportage-mutschler.pdf

gmcs Mar 5

RE: https://phalanstere.social/@the_conversation_fr/116138239999899644

#PublierLaScience 2500$ pour devenir 2e auteur d'une fausse publi dans une revue indexée par Embase (base de données de référence en médecine, comme Pubmed). On peut choisir son article et sa position d'auteur. cf. cet "appel à auteur" (frauduleux) diffusé sur Facebook.
Merci pour cette copie d'écran @the_conversation_fr qui illustre les pratiques des #papermills : cela donne du concret à nos discours de sensibilisation.