Paper Mills are organisations that produce fraudulent journal articles which appear at first glance to be genuine, and sell ‘authorship’ to those who are looking to inflate their publication records. This is an increasing problem and one which threatens to significantly pollute the research record.  Recently, Wiley has had to terminate journal titles and then discontinue their Hindawi imprint because of extensive infiltration by paper mill activity: https://retractionwatch.com/2023/12/06/wiley-to-stop-using-hindawi-name-amid-18-million-revenue-decline/ .

Some mills have gone as far as attempting to bribe editors to allow their fake papers easy publication: https://www.science.org/content/article/paper-mills-bribing-editors-scholarly-journals-science-investigation-finds. The excellent Blog ‘Retraction Watch’ keeps an eye on papers retracted when publishers are alerted to their fraudulent nature. here they discuss how the journal Naunyn-Schmiedeberg’s Archives of Pharmacology, deals with Paper Mills, including 20 ways to spot them: https://retractionwatch.com/2021/02/09/20-ways-to-spot-the-work-of-paper-mills/ .

 We will include links about this problem in future Blog entries together with other relevant links in publication ethics and integrity.