An economics study that was stolen and had its authorship slots sold by a paper mill has been retracted.
The move follows our reporting in January about a researcher in India who took to social media after an academic journal rejected her paper, noting that it had high similarity to a study published by other authors — despite the work being her own.
Vijayalakshmi S, an economics researcher at RV University in Bengaluru, had presented the study at a conference, and had a previous version rejected from a different journal. S concluded her paper was somehow stolen during either of those instances. Another researcher told us at the time that a post he found on Telegram offered authorship slots on S’s study for less than $200 apiece.
The Journal of Infrastructure, Policy and Development (JIPD), which published the stolen study, didn’t respond to our requests for comment for our earlier story. But last month, the journal’s editorial team replied to us, offering an explanation.
After a “thorough investigation,” the journal has now withdrawn the paper, JIPD’s representatives said, and notified all the authors involved, who are based in Oman, India, and Saudi Arabia.
It’s not the first time we’ve seen a stolen study get published by someone else. Last year, for instance, a journal run by the publisher Wiley retracted a paper after we reported on a case in which a peer reviewer stole an article they were refereeing and published it as their own.
The latest study, which was published in September 2024, has been removed entirely from JIPD’s website, with no retraction notice or listed reason. Guidelines from the Committee on Publication Ethics state publishers should issue retraction notices, which include the reasons for retraction and link to the pulled paper.
The email from the JIPD editorial team also stated that “the ownership of EnPress changed in November 2025, and we are the new editorial team. We mention this not to shift responsibility or offer empty explanations, but to provide clarity,” JIPD’s representatives told us.
“As the new team, we fully acknowledge that JIPD has faced significant issues in the past. What we aim to do now is to restore the academic reputation and rebuild the influence of the journal and the publisher as much as possible,” they added.
In January 2025, Scopus stopped indexing JIPD, and at the time some observers suggested it may have been that may be because the journals recently started publishing a significantly higher number of papers, which often signals a publication’s lowering standards.
Mohammed Ahmar Uddin of Dhofar University in Salalah, Oman, who was listed as the first author on the JIPD paper, did not reply to a request for comment for this story, but previously told us: “On my part, I assure you that I am capable enough and would never consider publishing a paper by dubious means.”
As for S, she said she is satisfied with the outcome even if the retracted paper’s title remains on the institutional site of one of the authors listed on the stolen study. “I’m personally very thankful to Retraction Watch,” S said. “This is actually bringing back that faith that the system has not totally gone out of hand.”
However, S noted, issuing a retraction notice would have increased the journal’s credibility. Nevertheless, S said she plans to resubmit the revised version of her paper to another journal. To avoid such problems in the future, she plans to post her other papers as preprints.
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The Telegram part is what gets me. Authorship slots being sold for under $200 on a public channel and somehow this still made it past the journal’s process. Good that it was retracted but the fact that no retraction notice was issued with a reason makes it feel like they just quietly removed it hoping nobody would notice.