The perfect crime of plagiarism
“What happens when plagiarism is officially confirmed, but correcting the scholarly record becomes structurally impossible?” – Leonid Borysenko
Category: Academic Publishing
Graphyne Chronicles, Episode 2
“For every paper like these two, there are hundreds or thousands that stay. Not because they are more defensible. Because nobody had two years to spare.” – Valentin Rodionov
A Bingdi lotus is in bloom
“Mr. Efferth firmly rejects the suspicion raised against him of involvement in paper mill activities and in the publication of automatically generated publications.” – University of Mainz
The Biggest Fraudster of All
“Leonid Schneider’s replies will appear in full at the following link: https://forbetterscience.com/” – PubPeer moderator
How Bernhard Sabel cured the blind and saved science
“What do science and “true love” have in common? Both are infatuated by passion, but if trust is lost, it is almost impossible to go back.” – Bernhard Sabel
The Trivedi Effect
“Mahendrakumar Trivedi does not need a Potion to make you fatter and more delicious; his psychic emanations are enough.”- Smut Clyde
Crunchy Frog and Cockroach Cluster
“On one side: late-career scientists resorting to purchased promotion of their early-career papers. On the other side: whole new genres of paper-shaped artifacts that are little more than packaging for ever-larger citation cargoes, and papermillers no longer bothering to find buyers for naming rights on their products.” – Smut Clyde
Scientific Reports 2025: A Year in Review
“In this blog I write about papers published by Scientific Reports in 2025, so we could consider it to be a sort of “wrap-up” of highlights and special achievements in the world’s biggest scientific journal™ in 2025.” – Sholto David
The Fribourg Declaration
“The papermill crisis is not an external attack on science but a mirror held up to its dysfunctional ecosystem. The for-profit publishing industry, posing as a newly found saviour of research integrity, is in fact its chief beneficiary and enabler.” – Csaba Szabo
The Citation Payola
“The proposition that a niche of citation brokers exists, opens our eyes to other transaction options..” . Smut Clyde
For Better Science 