Competition for jobs and grants in academia has never been tougher. The constant drive to “publish or perish” can make you feel like your career will end unless your output is superhuman. Sometimes, it’s even before graduation as some programs demand publication before awarding a PhD.

Adding to those worries are people whose output is unrealistic and not just because they’re having a good year or emptying their file drawer. Like athletes who resort to steroids, too many researchers are being tempted to engage in paper milling activities to artificially boost their output.

So, what should an honest researcher do? How can you avoid the unscrupulous or tell the difference between a smart person working hard and a researcher whose track record is built on fabricated data, plagiarism, salami slicing and faked peer review?

Normal vs Abnormal Productivity

The first sign of paper milling is higher than normal or even “hyperprolific” productivity. However, naturally, what’s normal depends on things like discipline and career stage.

For example, over a 15 year period, a physicist might publish nearly 8 papers/year, while an historian might produce something more like a paper every two years and a book every 5. A professor of medicine might publish 5 papers/year. Similarly, a professor of psychology might publish 4 papers/year, while at the more junior classification of ‘lecturer’ they might take 4 years to publish 3 papers.

These are averages, so it’s also normal to publish a bit more or a bit less. But, in general, normal productivity for researchers in most disciplines at most career stages is just a handful of papers per year and maybe a book every few years. Unless there are exceptional circumstances, it’s certainly not dozens of papers per year.

Paper Mills: Publishing Lots, Contributing Little

Some researchers become so focused on their publication metrics that they forget the purpose of research is to generate knowledge that, just maybe, solves some kind of problem. These researchers can sometimes turn to commercial paper mills and begin to buy authorships or work with collaborators to game and manipulate the publishing process.

A 2022 Committee on Publication Ethics and International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers paper defines paper milling as “the process by which manufactured manuscripts are submitted to a journal for a fee on behalf of researchers with the purpose of providing an easy publication for them, or to offer authorship for sale”. Paper milling may involve various kinds of unethical behaviour in service of publishing these manufactured manuscripts, such as plagiarism. However, not all plagiarism is necessarily paper milling, as paper milling operates at a larger scale than an individual who copies and pastes.

I call the conduct of researchers who work with collaborators to artificially enhance their output “paper mill-like” activity because their DIY cottage-industry engages in essentially the same practices as commercial providers, but without necessarily using a commercial provider. But as I have described elsewhere [30:05 streaming video], their paper mill-like activity can still span the full publication process from the development and drafting of the paper through to submission and peer review.

How Are Paper Mill Articles Born?

One of the most time intensive parts of research is coming up with ideas and collecting data, so paper milling researchers skip or shorten this step through plagiarism, fabrication and/or falsification. Plagiarisers can steal from published articles, theses, websites or repositories of code and data. Generative AI can be used to obscure sources or paper millers can run a draft through Turnitin or iThenticate until it comes out clean.

Reviewers are very unlikely to carefully check an article’s underlying data or code, so already-published open-source solutions or open data studies can find themselves republished on multiple occasions.

Further efficiencies can be gained through salami slicing or tweaking the topics without changing the underlying concept. For example, one paper might describe using concrete to build a single-storey house, a double-storey house in a second, a duplex in a third then a townhouse in a fourth.

Collaboration in Paper Mills: Authorship is a Gift

Paper milling is often a collaborative endeavour. Researchers might specialise in particular tasks, such as preparing the draft or the figures. Another researcher, thanks to their institution, might have access to Turnitin or iThenticate and use it to help conceal their group’s plagiarism.

Others might have access to publishing fee support, for example, by virtue of being employed by a university that has agreements with the relevant publishers. Alternatively, there might simply be the perception that “their famous name will get the paper accepted”. Many of these roles do not deserve authorship under any established criteria for authorship.

The normalisation of gift authorship inflates the track record of all paper mill participants, giving them an unfair advantage over honest researchers who have integrity and stick to the rules, only assigning authorship to those who have made substantial scholarly contributions.

Friendly Peer Review

Paper mill-like activity can also involve manipulated and conflicted publishing processes. This may involve suggesting fake peers to review, impersonating real researchers, or suggesting paper mill collaborators as peer reviewers.

Guest editorship is another recognised weakness in the publishing system. Paper millers often propose special issues, invite their collaborators to submit and then facilitate a friendly peer review, perhaps in exchange for citations or authorship on a current or future paper.

What Can Honest Researchers Do?

At an individual level, honest researchers can bring a more critical eye to the literature and strive to only publish with and cite trustworthy well-run publications. Be wary if anyone contacts you out of the blue inviting you to “collaborate” on a paper without needing to do any real work. You can also report paper milling conduct to relevant institutions and journals (R29 of Australia’s research code includes a reporting obligation). However, research integrity investigations are long and complex [30:05 streaming video] so it is almost certainly less painful to search a potential collaborator or team member’s name in the RetractionWatch database.

Paper milling can involve a vast array of unethical behaviours that undermine the credibility and values of modern scholarship. It spans the full publication process and includes numerous unethical practices. As an expert (or budding expert) in your field, you will have a sense of how hard it is to publish a single paper. So, if you see someone publishing more than what’s normal or realistic with no good reason, remember that they’re probably not that talented. They’re probably just paper milling.

Author Bio: Shaun Khoo is a project manager at UNSW Sydney.