In December 2023, Nature reported that retractions of research articles that year had passed 10,000, a record [1]. Most of them came from journals owned by Hindawi, a subsidiary of the publisher Wiley, which had pulled more than 8,000 articles so far that year [1]. The reasons given included “concerns that the peer review process has been compromised” [1].
The same month, Wiley published a white paper on what had gone wrong and what it was doing about it [2]. Much of it is about detection: spotting fake papers, fake reviewers and fake guest editors. That work matters. But my reading of the whole episode is that detection treats the symptom. Paper mills exist because careers are built on publication counts, and some publishing models make those counts easy to buy.
How a special issue gets hijacked
A special issue is a themed collection inside a journal, often overseen by a guest editor. Wiley’s white paper explains why they attract paper mills: guest editors take a temporary editorial role, help solicit the papers, and oversee peer review [2]. Control the guest editor, and you control the gate.
The white paper lists steps that such an infiltration often involves. In its account, a mill proposes a broad special issue so that papers on many topics can fit, fills it with fabricated papers or papers from authors willing to pay for a fast route, uses fake or compromised reviewers, and may sell co-authorships along the way [2]. The final step it lists is to “accept the papers via the fake or compromised Guest Editor and collect payment from the co-authors” [2].
Hindawi’s system, the white paper says, relied partly on trust that academics would act ethically as editors and reviewers [2]. According to the white paper, after an initial retraction of 511 articles announced in October 2022, Hindawi paused publication of all special issue content on 14 October 2022 [2]. Wiley says it has since sent sanction letters to several hundred guest editors, telling them they can no longer take an editorial role in its journals or publish with it [2].
The cost to the publisher was real. According to Nature, Wiley said in December 2023 that it would stop using the Hindawi brand, and that it expected to lose $35 million to $40 million in revenue that fiscal year [1].
A retraction is not a verdict on every author
Before going further, one caution. A mass retraction is not proof that every author of every retracted paper cheated. Wiley’s own rationale is narrower. It retracted papers because “the publication process has been undermined and we can no longer vouch for the integrity of the article” [2]. That is a statement about the process, not a finding about each person on the author list.
The white paper also names “the damaging effect on innocent authors who had published genuine papers in the journals affected” [2]. Honest researchers who had published real work in the affected journals saw those journals’ reputations tarnished, the white paper says [2]. They paid for a failure they did not cause.
That is why I avoid treating retraction numbers as a scoreboard of villains. They describe how badly a system was gamed, not what any single author did.
Why the mills have customers
A fraud needs buyers. In 2022, the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM) published a report on paper mills that asked directly what motivates authors to use them [3]. Its answer was blunt: in some institutions, “staff and students cannot move forward in their careers without publishing” [3].
The report gives examples. Doctoral students in some countries cannot graduate until they publish a paper [3]. A hospital clinician can be required to publish before being eligible for promotion, and some institutions and funders still pay authors for a published paper [3]. Its conclusion: “The paper mill industry is thriving” [3].
Wiley’s white paper says much the same. It says the culture of “publish or perish” has “incentivized unethical behaviour” as researchers feel pressure to publish high volumes of articles [2]. The publisher hit hardest names the incentive problem in its own words.
Imagine a busy hospital doctor told that promotion requires two published papers by next spring, with no protected research time. An email arrives offering authorship on a finished paper in a matching field, for a fee. The mill did not create that deadline. It just sells a way around it.
When a paper is the currency of a career, someone will print counterfeit papers. Hijacked special issues were a convenient printing press, but they were never the reason for the demand.
Detection works, up to a point
The strongest case against my argument is that detection clearly helps. The COPE and STM report, drawing on data from six publishers covering over 53,000 papers, found that most journals see about 2% suspected fake submissions, with a sharp rise once a mill has succeeded there [3]. It also found that “paper mills move away from submitting to journals that systematically reject their papers” [3]. Rejection works. Stricter checks on special issue proposals and guest editors, which Wiley says it has since introduced, close an obvious door [2].
I accept all of that. But notice what that finding describes. A mill that is blocked at one journal goes looking for another. Detection moves the problem around; it does not shrink the market.
That is also how I read United2Act, an initiative that grew out of a 2023 summit led by COPE and STM, and that Wiley endorsed on 19 January 2024 [4]. Its five focus areas are education and awareness, faster post-publication corrections, research on paper mills, trust markers that verify identity, and continued dialogue between stakeholders [4]. All are worthwhile. None of them, as listed, is mainly about how researchers are hired, graduated or promoted, which is where the COPE and STM report itself said some of the incentives come from [3].
What would change the incentives
Publishers cannot fix hiring committees, but universities, hospitals and funders can. The COPE and STM report recommended “an engagement with institutions and funders to change incentives for researchers” so that they no longer feel they need fake publications [3]. Wiley’s white paper made a related call, to reward open research practices so that the focus “is not only on the final published article” [2].
In practice, I think that means a few plain things. Stop making a paper count a hard requirement for graduation or promotion. Stop paying cash per paper. Judge people on a small number of their best contributions, including data and code, read by someone who understands them.
As a researcher who builds automated pipelines for imaging and clinical data, I see why careful work takes time, and a system that pays by the paper quietly punishes that slowness.
Paper mills are a business that sells what our institutions reward. Catching fake papers matters, but as long as a paper count decides who graduates and who gets promoted, the mills will keep finding customers.
The Hindawi retractions were a cleanup, and a necessary one. The next step belongs to the institutions that set the rules. If you sit on a hiring, promotion or thesis committee, ask what your rules reward, and whether a paper mill could satisfy them more easily than an honest researcher can.
References
[1] R. Van Noorden, “More than 10,000 research papers were retracted in 2023: a new record,” Nature, vol. 624, no. 7992, pp. 479-481, Dec. 2023, doi: 10.1038/d41586-023-03974-8.
[2] L. Flintoft, C. J. MacCallum, M. Streeter, D. Flanagan, and L. Ferguson, “Tackling publication manipulation at scale: Hindawi’s journey and lessons for academic publishing,” John Wiley & Sons white paper, Zenodo, Dec. 2023 [Online]. Available: https://zenodo.org/records/10419036
[3] COPE and STM, “Paper Mills: Research report from COPE & STM,” Committee on Publication Ethics, Version 1, Jun. 2022, doi: 10.24318/jtbG8IHL.
[4] M. Streeter, “Wiley endorse United2Act initiative,” Wiley, Jan. 19, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://www.wiley.com/en-us/about-us/corporate-responsibility/endorse-united2act-initiative
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