The Rise of the Papermills
“Is it possible that through no fault of Zintzaras & Ioannidis, their work was incorporated into a papermill template, accruing hundreds of spurious citations?” – Smut Clyde
By Leonid Schneider, on research integrity, biomedical ethics and academic publishing
“Is it possible that through no fault of Zintzaras & Ioannidis, their work was incorporated into a papermill template, accruing hundreds of spurious citations?” – Smut Clyde
Smut Clyde came to check how the Elsevier journal Microprocessors & Microsystems so far handled its “problems caused by dishonest guest editors and reviewers”.
“Even university management eventually realised that self-citations of your work, in your own papers, shouldn’t really count (“see ‘Toenail Clipping Microphotographs, Part 1’, S, Clyde 2018″). So people progressed to citation cabals among cronies, referring to each other’s work” – Smut Clyde
Papermill Industry enters its Logical Growth Phage. Smut Clyde explains what coordination polymer chemistry has to do with chickenshit.
“No, none of my data is forged.” – Ahmed Esmail Shalan
“The References dwell on bovine indigestion, seizures, and the work of N. Arunkumar.” – Smut Clyde, jazz-punk Klezmer musician.
“Long story short, we investigated our published papers and then retracted those with data integrity issues. That is it.” – Dr Heather Smith, Editor-in-Chief
Is the journal Cell Death and Disease a disease itself, parasitised by Chinese paper mills? Can it be cured? Not with this team of doctors on editorial board.
“Whole cohorts of peer-reviewers have been trained to view all these mannerist stylings as what western blots should look like. […] It will be a challenge to convince them otherwise.” – Smut Clyde.
“For the most competitive papers, an ultra-rapid review (by members of the Editorial Board) is necessary to publish them a few days after submission.”, Misha Blagosklonny, on how his journals became papermill fraud bonanza









