Today, ‘around one in 50 papers’ have patterns that suggest that they are from paper mills, says Adam Day, chief executive of Clear Skies, a publishing data analytics company based in London, UK. Peer review has been the main quality control process for journals for decades, but the paper mill crisis has overwhelmed this gatekeeping mechanism.
Publishers are fighting back with increasingly sophisticated automated and artificial intelligence (AI) technology that spots signs that articles were produced by paper mills, and other types of fraud. Many of these tools aim to flag fraudulent papers before they reach referees.
But although AI and automated tools can significantly improve the detection of fraudulent papers before (and after) they are published, some experts believe that their use is analogous to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. ‘We need to be more honest about how strained the system is and how it’s not doing what everybody says it’s doing and wants it to do,’ says Ivan Oransky, co-founder of Retraction Watch ….
