Astronomy and space sciences have guessed fraudulent practices of paper factories and predatory magazines, but that could be about to change, warns the authors of a new report that deepens the ugly criminal machinations.
“Because space is a great economic priority and many countries are doubling in space research, it would expect to see that the fraudulent editorial industry expands to this area,” the main author of the report, Reese Richardson, from Northwesternnn.
Occorbatingly, the report concludes that the publication of fraudulent sciences is beginning to overcome legitimate magazines, saying that if a note is made on this subject, it could forever contaminate a lot of scientific literature and simply increase.
One of the main means to evaluate a scientist’s career is to consider what documents have been involved in: how many documents do they have as the first author? How many as co -author? How many cite their work?
However, this metric seems to pave the way for some manipulative tactics. Paper factories and predatory magazines take advantage of researchers through the creation of invented documents, which are often plagiarized, complete or meaningless sciences or describe such lower or low quality developments as not to justify the publication. Sometimes they even offer author sending to investigators for prices that amount to the SINNS or even thousands of dollars. An article can also be promoted through a pairs review process for a price to ensure that it is published in a fraudulent magazine.
Ultimately, criminal organizations in the heart of this dire industry earn millions with scientific fraud. Sometimes, the magazines in which these false research works are published are created for that monetary purpose.
Other times, thought, a legitimate newspaper can be kidnapped. The recently published report on academic fraud, for example, cites the example of the British Magazine HIV Nursing. He had stopped publishing, only for his domain name to be bought by a criminal organization so that a false magazine could be created in his name with the sole intention of publishing fraudulent documents of a paper factory, or about issues that had nothing that had nothing that had nothing that did not have that. The most extreme cases involve these organizations that infiltrate a legitimate magazine, buying personnel to relieve fraud documents until publication.
“Paper factories tend to prefer topics that are easier for exploitation,” says Richardson. “For example, there is a lot of paper mills suspended in the science of materials.”
In other words, if there is profits to obtain from a field, such as materials, medical sciences or engineering, and then make the field vulnerable to fraudulent publications. Richardson cites the example of solar panel technology as a case in question.
“One of the areas very exploited by Paper Mills is renewable energy,” he said, highlighting examples of documents of documents in this field, where he found the same curves in only repeated graphics and more, in the different documents in them and lame nallions in them and cojas in the legitimate magazines of the legitimate and European legitimate magazines.
These copy and stuck works are indicative of a problem that in this particular topic can hinder the real research of renewable energy technology that could help us fight the climatic crisis.
However, “space and astronomy research is one of the areas in which not much paper factory activity has been detected,” Richardson said.
There could be several reasons for this. One is that those looking for suspended paper factories tend to come from the scientific fields most affected by this pest of false documents, so they are not sufficiently familiar with astronomical subjects to recognize the false.
“If there is a significant activity of the paper factory in space and astronomical research, then it is possible that it has not really been detected,” said Richardson.
Another possibility is that space and astronomy are not a particularly easy topic to exploit for profit. However, this could be about to change. In many developing countries where paper factories are particularly abundant, the space industry is beginning to grow. This could soon begin to attract criminal organizations that seek exploitable areas of science.
To avoid this and reduce the activities of paper factories, the report concludes that not only should there be a greater scrutiny in the editorial processes of the magazine, but we also need more intelligent methods to identify a false rejuiring or all, a wing of all the main ones, one of the main Alijarias, a medico career of all the main ones, a large amount, a large amount of science of the career.
Time is of the essence. “At some point it will be too late and the scientific literature will be completely poisoned,” said the co -author of the report, Luís Amaral of the Northwestern University, in a statement. “We must be aware of the seriousness of this problem and take measures to address it.”
The problem could also be about to get worse. There are alrealy debates about legitimate scientific articles that use artificial intelligence, and now AI can be used by paper factories to spit false science faster. If fraudulent documents and not detected in scientific literature, they will inevitably be used to train future AI generations, infecting them with false scientific data that AI will think that it is real, lead to an evil, the west of the west, which results: the Congs. Building complex climatic simulations, looking for cures for diseases or modeling difficult problems.
The scammers are poisoning the well for profit and if they do not stop soon, then the days of drinking him to trust the body of scientific literature and to have the ability to distinguish between scientific and false scientific facts for an enemy.
The report was published on August 4 in the magazine Acts of the National Academy of Sciences.
