Can you explain what these 1,500 papers are doing in this journal?

The Internet of Things. Computer science. Botany. COVID-19.

All worthwhile subjects, to be sure. But what do they have to do with materials science?

That’s what James Heathers, who will be familiar to readers of Retraction Watch as a “data thug,” found himself wondering after he spent a weekend looking into articles published by Materials Today: Proceedings. He found at least 1,500 off-topic papers, many with abstracts containing “tortured phrases” that may have been written by translation or paraphrasing software, and a few with titles that had been previously advertised with author positions for sale online. 

He detailed his findings in a blog post today, and says that the journal – an Elsevier title – has published many articles that look like the work of a paper mill.  

As examples of “tortured phrases,” he included abstracts from three off-topic papers – about blood pressure medications, industrial applications of robots, and vitamin D and fertility – that contained, he said, “empty verbiage.”  

Heathers also published a Facebook Marketplace listing he found that offered author slots for sale on papers to be published in the journal. He found articles with similar titles to the first and last in the list that had been published in the journal after the advertisement was posted. 

Heathers told us he stumbled upon a new way that paper mills operate: 

I always wondered about the mechanics of pay-to-play authorship ads which promised not just ‘guaranteed acceptance’ of papers but also a guaranteed timeframe for acceptance. Even bad peer reviewers aren’t particularly fast! And fake peer reviewers should be sensible enough to not instantly return their reviews – that’s obviously suspicious.

I used to think a stated timeframe was simply paper mills over-promising what they could deliver. But maybe it isn’t! If a fake paper is tied to a conference submission, maybe they CAN promise ‘acceptance within 15 to 30 days’.

This is a particularly alarming wrinkle in the paper mill business model that I didn’t predict, and I only found it because I was looking for it. I do not know how many papers it involves, or how many other proceedings journals have this publication model. But it is entirely factual to say: (1) there are at least 1500 conference papers in this material science journal with no material science content whatsoever, (2) I have read the abstracts of several dozen which in my opinion have the hallmarks of ‘tortured phrases‘, and (3) I have located a handful of pay to play ads published previously to later papers with the same title in paper marketplaces.

What I truly can’t differentiate between is (a) bad papers submitted by authors and (b) bad papers submitted by paper mills on behalf of authors. It makes no difference to the integrity of the research, of course.

I did this over a weekend, out of curiosity, for no money.

We often wonder how papers unrelated to a journal’s subject matter end up published. In several recent cases involving special issues, publishers tell us that guest editors’ identities were hijacked. 

We emailed the publishing director of Elsevier’s materials sciences journals for comment, and didn’t hear back. [See update at the end of the post.]

Materials Today: Proceedings isn’t the only conference proceedings journal with an apparent paper mill problem. Heathers cited our recent reporting on a case in which sleuth Nick Wise identified suspicious articles in IOP journals that publish conference series, resulting in nearly 500 retractions. 

In his conclusion, Heathers summed up his findings thusly: 

I think we need to appreciate just how well a journal which publishes conference proceedings wholesale and without scrutiny allows a perfect sweet spot to launder fake papers. If other proceedings journals operate under the ‘no editorial staff, no copy editing staff, outsource peer review, a signed affidavit is good enough’ model, then we have a gigantic problem.

Update, 1400 UTC, 9/29/22: An Elsevier spokesperson tells us that the “relevant editorial team…have started to investigate this claim.”

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at [email protected].