Chinese scholars use ghostwriters and bogus referees to publish academic papers

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Busted: Chinese scholars use ghostwriters and bogus referees to publish academic papers in international journals

Many of the mainland academics used pseudonyms to write reviews of their own papers or paid other people up to 100,000 yuan (HK$121,000) to write their reports for them

PUBLISHED : Friday, 13 November, 2015, 4:20pm
UPDATED : Friday, 13 November, 2015, 4:22pm

Jun Mai
[email protected]



Getting papers published in international academic journals, including The Lancet, helps mainland scholars and researchers gain promotion. Photo: SCMP Pictures

More than 100 academic papers published in international journals by Chinese scholars have been invalidated this year after they were found to have been ghostwritten or verified by bogus referees.

An investigation by China Association for Science and Technology, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and other mainland institutions found many scholars used pseudonyms to write reviews of their own papers or paid other people up to 100,000 yuan (HK$121,000) to write the papers for them.

Three publishers acted after irregularities were uncovered in more than 100 Chinese academic papers, Xinhua news agency said.

Elsevier, a leading publisher of technical, scientific and medical academic journals including The Lancet and Cell, had invalidated nine papers by mainland scholars this year, which were featured in its publications.

In August, Springer, another academic journal publisher, invalidated 64 papers that it had been published in 10 of journals, most of which had been submitted by mainland academics.

The British-based BioMed Central invalidated 43 papers in March, 41 of which had been written by mainland academics.

Xinhua quoted the publishers as saying that all the papers were invalidated because of examples of “fake peer reviews provided by a third-party institute”.

Peer reviews involve references and recommendations provided by other academics, which can largely decide whether a paper will be published.

The number of papers published internationally is an important criterion for promoting scholars and researchers at mainland academic institutes, which then determines their personal salaries and research funding.

Huang Baiyun, deputy director of the China Association for Science and Technology, said the mainland scholars had sent their papers for reviews to email addresses they had created themselves and lied to the publishers that the review had been done by a third party.

The investigation also revealed “assembly line” institutions employing mainland students that had studied abroad, who had been hired to write peer reviews, improve the English language in the papers, and sometimes write the papers themselves.

Such institutes advertised their services on the internet as language companies, and claimed that the only services they offered were to improve the English in the academic papers.

Some people working for such institutes even searched for authors in Chinese-language journals and sent them emails to promote their services. Ghostwriters charged between a few thousand yuan to up to 100,000 yuan per paper.

One woman doctor in Nanjing, with considerable clinical experience, including cancer surgery, sought help after her academic papers were rejected several times because of problems with her English skills and lack of peer review. She found someone to work on her papers on Taobao, the biggest customer-to-customer e-commerce site in China.

The person edited her papers and provided a fake peer review, which quickly helped her publish a paper in Diagnostic Pathology, a prominent medical journal.

“Different fields should have different methods for assessment,” said Wang Naiyan, a senior consultant with the China National Nuclear Corporation’s science and technology committee. “The number of papers published should not be the only focus.”





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