A scientist from Europe during his recent visit to Malaysia shared his nervousness about a student who applied for a PhD position in his laboratory. The first thing that struck him was a long list of 76 peer-reviewed publications authored by the student, who just completed a Master’s degree a few years ago.

For many of us, penning a paper once a month is a piece of cake. For others – once a week or even less. Those prolific authors must be super-efficient with their regular business of teaching, supervising, marking exam papers, writing research proposals and last reading new publications.

A common excuse is the super cool (borrowing a term from my colleague) ability of some authors to create networks and research collaboration, that is, the more they collaborate, the more published papers they will have. Nevertheless, the subjective concern about their actual intellectual contribution remains unsolved. Hence the accusations of unethical practice often escape the dock in the courtroom.

As of now, there are about 45,000 papers that are listed as “retracted” in the database of Retraction Watch for one or another form of scientific fraud or misconduct. Surely the count does not reflect the actual number. In fact, many will go unnoticed.

Given the urgency of both students and academics, predatory and many so-called reputed journals grab the opportunity to publish papers by charging authors “article processing fees” in the name of open-access publications. Hence the praxis “publish or perish” has now become “pay and publish”.

Source: https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/opinion/2023/12/11/scientific-fraud-is-more-open-than-secret/