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Black market in science: how fake papers, studies, and citations are sold

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  Published in Science and Technology on Tuesday, September 30th 2025 at 22:07 GMT by earth
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The Black Market in Science: How Fake Math Papers and Citations Are Sold

The scholarly world—long considered the bastion of rigorous inquiry and verifiable evidence—is facing an insidious threat. A new exposé on Earth.com, titled “Black market in science: How fake math papers and citations are sold,” unpacks a sophisticated underground economy that manufactures falsified research and monetises academic citations. While the phenomenon is not new, the scale, technology, and global reach of the market have grown exponentially in recent years, compromising the integrity of research and threatening the very foundations of academia.

The Anatomy of the Market

The article opens by describing a “citation farm” as a business that creates a vast array of seemingly legitimate academic papers—often in mathematics, physics, and engineering—and then sells them to researchers, institutions, and even governments that need publications for tenure, funding, or policy support. The sellers are organized into a tiered hierarchy:

1. Paper Mills – These factories, often based in low‑income countries, churn out thousands of journal‑style manuscripts daily. They employ semi‑trained writers who can produce polished prose and format citations correctly, but they lack any genuine data or peer review. The “math paper” phenomenon is especially prevalent because the subject matter can be generated with algorithmic tools that produce random but plausible equations and proofs.

2. Citation Syndicates – These groups target established journals that have a reputation for quick turnaround and high impact. They submit the fabricated papers, secure acceptance, and then use the resulting citations to boost the paper mill’s clients’ bibliometric profiles.

3. Brokerage Networks – Individuals or small firms act as intermediaries between buyers and sellers. They market the service on academic forums, private message boards, and even social media platforms like Telegram and Discord, where the pseudonym “Dr. X” can negotiate deals.

The Earth.com article notes that prices can range from $300 for a single article to several thousand dollars for a package of 10–20 papers, sometimes bundled with “citation boosts” that guarantee a certain number of citations over the next 12 months.

How the Fraud Works

1. Paper Creation

The paper mills use a combination of AI text generators (e.g., GPT‑4) and pre‑written templates. They insert fabricated data sets, generate random plots, and cite legitimate references that are merely linked together by keyword. In math, where the main claim is a theorem or a proof, the mills craft “proofs” that resemble textbook derivations but contain hidden logical fallacies or unproven assumptions. The final product is a polished PDF that mimics the formatting of journals such as Journal of Applied Mathematics or Linear Algebra and Its Applications.

2. Peer‑Review Evasion

Once a manuscript is prepared, the syndicate identifies “friendly” or “predatory” journals that do not rigorously vet submissions. They submit the fake paper, sometimes paying the publication fee, and leverage a network of editors who accept the paper on the basis of the manuscript’s appearance. In some cases, the syndicate offers “review services” to expedite acceptance—this is a key factor that keeps the supply chain moving.

3. Citation Inflation

After publication, the paper becomes part of the scholarly record. The mills then insert backlinks in a web of self‑referencing papers. A new paper will cite the fake one; that paper, in turn, will cite other fabricated works. This creates a self‑reinforcing loop that inflates the citation count of the client’s real research. The article highlights how metrics like the h‑index and journal impact factor—essential for promotions, grant awards, and institutional rankings—can be artificially elevated by such practices.

Real‑World Impact

Academic Integrity at Risk

The article cites a 2023 survey by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in which 14% of respondents reported encountering plagiarised or fabricated content in journals that claimed to be peer‑reviewed. Moreover, a 2022 report by the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) identified 57% of the top 100 math journals as vulnerable to predatory practices, including the acceptance of machine‑generated manuscripts.

Institutional Consequences

An anecdote from the piece recounts the story of a mid‑western university that had to retract 11 faculty members’ publications after an internal audit revealed that a significant proportion of those papers were sourced from a known paper mill. The university faced a lawsuit from a research partner who had been misled by the fabricated data, and the institution lost several grant awards worth $4.3 million.

Policy Ramifications

The article notes that funding bodies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the European Research Council (ERC) have tightened their evaluation criteria, focusing more on data availability statements and reproducibility. However, the black market remains resilient because the pressure to publish is still the dominant metric in many fields.

Who’s Investigating?

The exposé references multiple investigations:

• Nature’s “The Citation Crunch” – A 2021 feature that highlighted the rise of “citation laundering” and urged journals to adopt more stringent anti‑plagiarism software.
• The University of Oxford’s “Research Integrity Unit” – Reported on an international collaboration that traced the origins of several fabricated papers back to a paper mill in Eastern Europe.
• The World Economic Forum’s “Science for Good” initiative – Developed a blockchain‑based verification system that assigns a tamper‑proof “research ID” to each legitimate publication.

The Earth.com article quotes Dr. Amelia Chen, a computational ethicist at MIT, who warns that “the more convenient and cheaper it becomes to generate fake content, the more likely academics will fall into the trap of outsourcing to unscrupulous vendors.”

The Road Ahead

While some scholars hope that the proliferation of pre‑print servers and open‑review platforms will expose such fraud, the article concludes that a multifaceted approach is required:

1. Technological Countermeasures – AI‑driven plagiarism detection, stylometric analysis to flag machine‑generated text, and citation‑network mapping tools to detect anomalous citation clusters.
2. Policy Reforms – Mandatory open‑data repositories, stricter peer‑review protocols, and sanctions for institutions that knowingly publish fraudulent work.
3. Cultural Shifts – Moving beyond the “publish or perish” paradigm, rewarding replication studies, and fostering transparent reporting.

In a world where data is increasingly digitised, the line between genuine insight and manufactured misinformation is blurring. The article from Earth.com serves as a stark reminder that the scientific ecosystem, like any complex system, is vulnerable to exploitation. As researchers, publishers, and policymakers grapple with the challenges of the digital age, a coordinated effort is essential to safeguard the credibility of scholarly communication and ensure that mathematics—an enduring pillar of scientific reasoning—remains grounded in truth rather than transactions.