How to Address Paper Mills

Paper mills are organised processes of providing authorship and manuscript publication for sale to researchers. They are a growing concern within the scholarly publishing community, and current estimates indicate over 1.5% of the literature consisting of such articles, with 6,937 retracted (as of Oct 2024). An elaborate overview of definitions and the history of paper mills, as well as some of the challenges they are currently creating, can be found in a recent article.  

We recommend editors and publishers use the following resources to help prevent, manage, and respond to potential manipulations of paper mills:

• Organisations:

• • Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) has specifically provided various resources, including
    • Systematic manipulation of the publication process – this tool aims to support the identification of potential fraudulent activity and provides flowcharts which can be used when handling suspected manipulation. Suggested actions are recommended for each type of suspicious activity.
    • Addressing concerns about systematic manipulation of the publication process – covers four aspects:
      • how to deal with the practical and administrative burden of collecting the evidence;
      • how to provide timely due process that considers the batch assessment, while also considering the resource impacts and constraints for journals/publishers; 
      • the scope of and mechanisms for information sharing among publishers; 
      • how to manage the conflicting demands of editorial freedom, publisher responsibility, and legal risks.
  • United2Act – a consortium of stakeholders, is currently working collaboratively to address the collective challenge of paper mills in scholarly publishing. hey have identified five main areas in need of further understanding to address paper mill activities. We will update the page when more of their resources become available. 

• Webinars: 
  • Practical steps to managing paper mills, 

• Research articles: 
  • Detection of paper mill activities
  • Paper Mill challenges: past, present and future

We welcome suggestions for any additional resources, editors, journals, or researchers feel should be added to these pages.