Global fraud networks are flooding science journals with fake studies

Organized, large-scale fraud is quietly infiltrating scientific journals – and it’s growing faster than legitimate research, according to a new study.

Many once thought of these as isolated cases of misconduct by individual researchers, but investigators are now revealing them as a sprawling, coordinated system. It is complete with brokers, hijacked journals, and “paper mills” that churn out fake studies for profit.

Losing public trust in science

The researchers behind the study – led by Northwestern University – say the scale of the problem threatens to erode public trust in science unless action is taken soon.

Their work combines sweeping data analysis with detailed case studies to expose how these fraudulent networks operate and why they are so difficult to stop.

“Science must police itself better to preserve its integrity,” said Luís A. N. Amaral, the study’s senior author.

“If we do not create awareness around this problem, worse and worse behavior will become normalized. At some point, it will be too late, and scientific literature will become completely poisoned.”

From isolated misconduct to global crime

People often frame fraud in science as the story of one dishonest researcher manipulating data or plagiarizing work.

But Amaral’s team found something much more organized – sophisticated global networks of individuals and entities systematically working together to manipulate the publication process.

“These networks are essentially criminal organizations, acting together to fake the process of science,” Amaral said. “Millions of dollars are involved in these processes.”

The team’s analysis drew on large databases such as Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed, along with lists of journals removed from indexing for ethical or quality failures.

They also examined records of retracted articles, image duplications, and even metadata like editor names and submission timelines.

The booming business of fake science

The data revealed the central role of so-called “paper mills” – operations that produce fake science research papers for paying customers.

Some content fabricates information, plagiarizes text, or uses manipulated images, with certain claims being physically impossible.

“More and more scientists are being caught up in paper mills,” Amaral said. “Not only can they buy papers, but they can buy citations. Then, they can appear like well-reputed scientists when they have barely conducted their own research at all.”

According to first author Reese Richardson, these businesses have multiple models but a common goal: selling prestige.

“They often sell authorship slots for hundreds or even thousands of dollars,” he said. “A person might pay more for the first author position or less for a fourth author position.”

“People can also pay to get papers they have written automatically accepted in a journal through a sham peer-review process.”

Amaral’s group has even developed a system to detect paper mill products, including scanning for suspicious mistakes such as misidentified laboratory instruments. This method has already flagged questionable papers accepted by reputable journals.

Journals are hijacked for profit

The investigation also uncovered the brokers who connect every part of the fraud pipeline: the ghostwriters, the paying authors, the willing journals, and even complicit editors.

“You need to find someone to write the paper and find people willing to pay to be the authors,” Amaral explained. “You need to find a journal where you can get it all published. And you need editors in that journal who will accept that paper.”

In some cases, fraudulent actors skip legitimate journals entirely by taking over the identity of defunct ones. This tactic, known as journal hijacking, gives their publications a veneer of credibility.

“This happened to the journal HIV Nursing,” Richardson said. “It was formerly the journal of a professional nursing organization in the U.K., then it stopped publishing, and its domain lapsed. An organization bought the domain and started publishing thousands of papers on subjects completely unrelated to nursing, all indexed in Scopus.”

AI raises the stakes for research

The researchers warn that the problem will only get worse with the rise of generative AI, which can produce convincing but false text and data at scale.

“If we’re not prepared to deal with the fraud that’s already occurring, then we’re certainly not prepared to deal with what generative AI can do to scientific literature,” Richardson said.

“We have no clue what’s going to end up in the literature, what’s going to be regarded as scientific fact and what’s going to be used to train future AI models, which then will be used to write more papers.”

Protecting science from fake news

To protect the credibility of science from fake research, the authors recommend stronger editorial oversight, better tools to detect fabricated work, and deeper investigation into the networks enabling fraud. They also call for reforming the incentives that drive researchers to pay for publications.

“This study is probably the most depressing project I’ve been involved with in my entire life,” Amaral said.

“Since I was a kid, I was excited about science. It’s distressing to see others engage in fraud and in misleading others. But if you believe that science is useful and important for humanity, then you have to fight for it.”

The study is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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