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Scientific articles for sale in black market

Oct 18,2021 - Last updated at Oct 18,2021

A new threat to academic publishing is the “co-authorship publisher”. These unscrupulous publishers advertise to publish ready-made papers written by international experts on a wide range of topics of education, economics, medicine, biology, political science, architecture, informatics and engineering. An author can buy a position or an entire article. The papers have already been written, translated, proofread, formatted and the journal has been chosen for publication. The customer simply needs to choose a topic, a position in the article and pay. The cost per position in the article depends on the journal's publication fee policy.

The publisher oversees the article's publication and indexing in the Scopus/Web of Science (SCIE, SSCI, AHCI, and ESCI) databases, making changes based on reviewer comments. The publisher ensures the confidentiality of the article position purchase by performing a scientific rewrite of the article title and abstract during the journal publication process. Any dishonest scientist can co-author a publication. Information about co-authors would be available during final manuscript coordination before the submission. To be the sole author, the purchaser must purchase the entire article.

Until payment is made, the publisher withholds the journal and article titles. After the author team is assembled and approved, the publisher sends the article to the journal's editorial office for review. An article review takes 1-3 months on average. After article acceptance, publication usually takes 1-2 months.

And we can see the negative ramifications and corruption of this type of researcher who buys research and then gets promotions and positions that cost them nothing but money. There is no evidence that Jordanian scientists are involved; however, the difficult task that Jordan's ministry of higher education and scientific research, research bodies, and universities must undertake is to put in place a mechanism to detect this fake research and a deterrent to punish everyone who begs himself to ride the fake research train to what is not worthy, with punishment ranging from expulsion from the academic cadre to inclusion on the blacklist. And place the published journals on a banned list from which no scientific publication is accepted, even if the researcher is genuine, because the journal has lost its scientific integrity, which is the most crucial aspect of publishing scientific research and is irreversible.

 

Wejdan Abu Elhaija is vice president for academic affairs at Princess Sumaya University for Technology

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