SUBMISSION PRICES DEPEND ON THE REPUTATION OF THE JOURNAL
On January 18, the news site of Science , one of the most prestigious scientific journals in the world, published an investigation into the problem of companies doing business in the academic field bribing many editorial board members with thousands of dollars to ensure that their articles submitted to the journal would definitely be accepted for publication.
Jack Ben's Facebook Ads (before they were deleted)
The investigation found that several paper mills (academic business companies) and over 30 editors of mainstream journals were involved in this bribery scheme. Science believes that what has been exposed is likely just the tip of the iceberg.
According to Science, the investigation began in June 2023, when Dr. Nicholas Wise, a fluid dynamics researcher at the University of Cambridge (UK), and an expert in combating scientific fraud, discovered something he had never seen on Facebook of a person claiming to be Jack Ben, working for Olive Academic, an academic business in China. On his personal page, Jack Ben sought partners as editors of scientific journals, promising: "You will definitely make money from us". The accompanying information showed that some editors who "collaborated" with Olive Academic were paid up to 20,000 USD, and currently 50 editors have signed contracts with this company. Jack Ben even introduced an online form for editors interested in Olive Academic's offer to fill out.
When a Science journalist contacted Jack Ben by phone, he mistook the caller for an editor at a scientific journal who wanted to "collaborate." Jack Ben said that many of Olive Academic's clients needed articles published; if they agreed to cooperate, the editor of the scientific journal could offer a price depending on the reputation of the journal. Regarding the form of payment, the editor would receive half of the agreed amount when the article was accepted for publication, and the other half would be transferred when the article was published online. When he realized that the caller was not the editor of the journal, Jack Ben asked to continue the conversation via WhatsApp (an online communication application) and denied "bribing" the editors, while affirming that his company only provided writing consulting services. Shortly after, Jack Ben deleted the posts inviting "collaborators" on Facebook.
WHEN EDITORS ARE CHEATERS TOO
From information on Jack Ben's Facebook (before it was deleted), Science was able to discover one of the many editors collaborating with Olive Academic, Dr. Malik Alazzam. On the professional social network LinkedIn, Alazzam identified himself as "Editor of Scopus and ISI journals", and was also a researcher or former associate professor at universities in Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and Jordan. One of the articles edited by Alazzam was also "leaked". It was an article published in a special issue of the Journal of Healthcare Engineering of Hindawi Publishing House. Another document shows that just 3 days after this article was accepted for publication, Olive Academic paid Alazzam 840 USD through an intermediary, Tamjeed Publishing Company (managed by Alazzam himself). Other bribes from Olive Academic to Alazzam amounted to 16,300 USD. However, Alazzam declined to be interviewed by Science when asked about this.
According to Dr. Wise, Tamjeed Publishing acted as a broker, connecting academic businesses with scientific journal editors. Among the editors in this network was Dr. Omar Cheikhrouhou of Taif University in Saudi Arabia and Sfax University in Tunisia. Previously, through information on Jack Ben's Facebook page, Dr. Wise realized that Cheikhrouhou was in charge of the peer review process for a paper published in a special issue of the journal Mobile Information Systems, also published by Hindawi. Accepting the article for publication brought Cheikhrouhou a bribe of $1,050. Science reporters contacted Cheikhrouhou, but he stopped responding to messages after being asked for an interview.
Cheikhrouhou and Alazzam have both edited several other special issues of Hindawi and are currently guest editors for several journals of MDPI and IMR Press.
Both papers were retracted in November 2023 (along with thousands of other papers published in special issues due to compromised peer review). Recently, Wiley (the company that acquired Hindawi) announced that it would be phasing out the Hindawi brand due to the scale and extent of its journals being infiltrated by mills, resulting in 19 journals being delisted from the ISI index and four journals being closed by Wiley. A Wiley spokesperson admitted to Science : “In the last year, we have identified hundreds of fraudsters in our journals, some of whom were guest editors, who have been removed from our system.”
ACADEMIC BUSINESS COMPANIES' TRICKS
According to Science , not only two companies, Olive Academic and Tamjeed Publishing, bribed editors to publish articles. A Ukrainian article mill, Tanu.pro, also managed to infiltrate the editorial board of a Wiley-published journal.
An editor named Liudmyla Mashtaler accepted several of the mill’s articles for publication in a special issue of the Review of Education . Liudmyla Mashtaler is listed on the Review of Education editorial board as having a doctorate. But a Ukrainian government document shows that Liudmyla Mashtaler was in her first year of a master’s program in 2020. Not only did they fabricate their degrees, but the editors in charge of a special issue of the Hindawi-published Scientific Programming journal were not even real people. This is a new tactic of academic businesses to control the entire publishing process, from contacting the journal to propose a special issue with a fake editor name made up by the mill, to personally accepting the publication of their own articles.
Bribing editors to publish poor quality articles does not only occur in special issues, which are easy targets for article mills. Among the editorial board members with ties to Olive Academic, many are permanent editors of journals owned by Wiley, Elsevier (one of the world’s largest scientific publishers - Thanh Nien ) and other publishers. A typical example is Oveis Abedinia, an electrical engineer at Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan, permanent editor of Complexity , a journal owned by Hindawi Publishing House. This journal was also advertised by Dr. Malik Alazzam on social media that his company had contracts and invited researchers to publish articles.
Another case mentioned in Science 's investigation is iTrilon, a company that provides article posting services in India.
Siddhesh Zadey, a graduate student at Columbia University (USA), said that while visiting his parents in India, he was contacted by Dr. Sarath of iTrilon, inviting him to "buy" the authorship of a pre-written scientific article with a 100% commitment that the article would be accepted for publication in a scientific journal. To learn more, Siddhesh Zadey pretended to be a medical student and asked for more information, and Dr. Sarath confirmed that iTrilon had a network of "insiders" who were editors of many scientific journals. One of the journals that iTrilon is "collaborating" with is Health Science Reports of Wiley Publishing House.
In an interview with a Science journalist, Dr. Sarath admitted to selling authorship of articles but denied that iTrilon colluded with editors. However, Science has provided ample evidence that iTrilon bribed editors of scientific journals to publish poor quality articles. ( continued )
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