Wiley Shuts Down 19 Journals Amid Research Fraud Scandal

This comes as the rise of AI contributes to record highs in paper retractions, with works from China’s underground paper mills leading the numbers globally.

A photo of part of the home page for Wiley, a U.S. multinational publishing company focusing on academic publishing and instructional materials. The Epoch Times

U.S.-based multinational publisher Wiley announced the closure of 19 scientific journals in May, many of which were implicated in significant research fraud.

Wiley confirmed that over the past two years, it has retracted more than 11,300 papers from its subsidiary Hindawi’s collection. While Wiley acknowledged research fraud as a factor in the decision, the publisher cited multiple reasons for the shutdown, including plans to integrate Hindawi with Wiley’s existing product portfolio.

Wiley acquired the Egyptian publisher Hindawi, which was founded in 1997, for $298 million in January 2021. Hindawi oversees more than 200 peer-reviewed scientific, technical, and medical journals. Initially, Wiley anticipated that this acquisition would offer researchers more publishing options and enhance services for its partners. However, subsequent revelations uncovered extensive academic publishing scandals within Hindawi.

In 2022, thousands of papers were retracted from Hindawi journals due to manipulated peer reviews. In March 2023, 19 Hindawi journals were delisted from Clarivate’s Web of Science index for failing to meet editorial quality standards. By May 2023, Wiley had shut down four Hindawi journals to address “systematic manipulation of the publishing process.”

In December 2023, Wiley announced the discontinuation of the Hindawi brand, with plans to integrate approximately 200 Hindawi journals into Wiley’s portfolio of 2,000 journals within the year.

The publisher also revealed that the influx of paper mill submissions to Hindawi journals contributed to an $18 million drop in quarterly revenue compared to the same period last year.

Record Numbers of Retractions

Paper mills—companies that ghostwrite academic papers for clients—are not new to the academic landscape. Clients typically provide the paper’s topic, length, and deadline, paying accordingly. However, with the rapid development of artificial intelligence, the scale and intensity of this academic fraud have escalated.

According to a report in the British science weekly Nature last December, the number of retractions issued for research articles in 2023 had surpassed 10,000, setting a new annual record. Some academic sleuths believe this figure may only represent the tip of the iceberg, estimating that paper mills produce hundreds of thousands of substandard papers annually.

Nature’s analysis indicates that the retraction rate (the total number of retracted papers per year divided by the total number of published papers) has more than doubled in the past decade.

These large-scale fraudulent activities threaten the legitimacy of the nearly $30 billion academic publishing industry and the credibility of science as a whole. Another Nature report from February stated that nearly 14,000 retraction notices were issued by publishers in 2023, again setting a new record.

The report also noted that approximately three-quarters of these retractions involved Chinese scholars. Of the more than 9,600 retracted papers from Hindawi alone, about 8,200 originated from China. Since 2021, over 17,000 retracted papers have involved Chinese scholars.

Industrialization of Fraudulent Paper Production

China’s underground paper mills offer comprehensive services, ranging from ghostwriting to publishing. These mills can produce papers for a wide array of journals, from ordinary to top international publications, with fees varying accordingly.

In May last year, Bernhard Sabel, a neuropsychologist at the University of Magdeburg in Germany, collaborated with other academics to publish an investigative report on the medical and health sciences preprint server medRxiv. The report revealed alarming trends in academic fraud.

The report stated that from 2010 to 2020, the proportion of “red-flagged fake publications (RFPs)” increased from 16 to 28 percent. In 2020 alone, it is estimated that the number of fraudulent papers in the biomedical field exceeded 300,000. The countries with the highest incidence of fraudulent papers include Russia, Turkey, China, Egypt, and India. Among them, China, the largest contributor of all RFPs, accounts for 55 percent of the global total.

The report highlighted that underground paper mills are primarily concentrated in China, India, Russia, the UK, and the United States. If each fraudulent paper sells for an average of $10,000, the industry’s annual turnover could reach $3-4 billion. Not only do paper mills profit, but in some extreme cases, editors and publishers of smaller journals also charge authors for publishing their papers.

With the advent of AI, the industry’s scale is likely even higher now. The biomedical field has become a major victim of paper fraud because the number of published papers is a key criterion for the promotion of doctors and scholars in China.

Mr. Sabel told Voice of America (VOA) that he had been approached by paper mills offering substantial compensation. “The temptation is quite high; you could almost retire on this money,” he said.

“I can say with certainty that China is the region with the most severe issues of fraud,” Mr. Sabel told VOA. “If you look at the retracted papers or observe the publicly known fraudulent papers, you will find that most of them come from China. Of course, China is not the only region with issues of fraud; other hotspots include Russia.

“On some Chinese websites, you can even see ready-made papers with specific topics that you can just pick out. It’s like going to a store and choosing a T-shirt you like. It’s terrifying.”

Rampant Fraud in China

The editorial series “Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party” by The Epoch Times highlights the prevalence of fraud in China, describing it as a nation characterized by “fraud, evil, and struggle.”

Even Chinese state media acknowledged two years ago that “from birth to death, all documents can be falsified.” This includes medical papers in top international journals, making it unsurprising that other documents can also be fabricated.

In an environment where “everything can be faked,” significant changes have occurred in the thinking and behavior of the populace. Fraud has become commonplace, and trust between individuals is nearly nonexistent.

Approximately three to four years ago, a Chinese immigrant from Guangdong, who had just arrived in New Zealand, needed to handle various proof documents. He informed an Epoch Times reporter that, due to insufficient materials, he used a “fake real driver’s license” made in China. A “fake real driver’s license” means that all the information on the license is accurate, but it is not officially issued; instead, it is produced on the black market.

When asked why he didn’t obtain an official license if all the information was correct, the immigrant replied that dealing with the authorities was too troublesome. The process was costly, time-consuming, and lacked a guarantee of being completed in one go. The black market version was quicker, cheaper, and looked just like the real thing.