Very good question, indeed.

I share with you the idea that the phenomenon of "Balloon Professors" does exist but there are various cheating schemes in addition to what you mentioned . As expected, the perpetrators will try hard to keep it as a closely guarded secret due to the betrayal nature of their activities. Since they are negatively "smart", an intelligent mechanism ought to be followed to uncover what they have concealed.

I have reiterated this suggestion , at Research Gate, to the international academia circles:

All "full professors" must be subjected to oral & written exams with regard to what they have published. The questions may include general basic topics as well since "ignorance" may be also detected. The exams will be better prepared by external committees.

Since these professors get "fat" salaries, consume university resources, and are presented as " crème de la crème " then they are required to accept these exams in order to separate "truth" from "fiction". The results of the exams will lead to the decision of either letting (X) stay with the high academic title or relegating (Y) to a deserved inferior rank.

As a "retired" scholar, I may be advised to keep quiet but I think that silence is a crime when there is falsehood in academic institutions on global scale.

Very good question, indeed.

I share with you the idea that the phenomenon of "Balloon Professors" does exist but there are various cheating schemes in addition to what you mentioned . As expected, the perpetrators will try hard to keep it as a closely guarded secret due to the betrayal nature of their activities. Since they are negatively "smart", an intelligent mechanism ought to be followed to uncover what they have concealed.

I have reiterated this suggestion , at Research Gate, to the international academia circles:

All "full professors" must be subjected to oral & written exams with regard to what they have published. The questions may include general basic topics as well since "ignorance" may be also detected. The exams will be better prepared by external committees.

Since these professors get "fat" salaries, consume university resources, and are presented as " crème de la crème " then they are required to accept these exams in order to separate "truth" from "fiction". The results of the exams will lead to the decision of either letting (X) stay with the high academic title or relegating (Y) to a deserved inferior rank.

As a "retired" scholar, I may be advised to keep quiet but I think that silence is a crime when there is falsehood in academic institutions on global scale.

It may certainly be a problem that not all appearing in the list of authors have contributed sufficiently to the paper. Personally, I don't believe in any dramatic countermeasures, but information may help. The Vancouver protocol for authorship has existed for many years and now IEEE has made their own version.

The question: "Is the Vancouver-protocol for Authorship adopted by the Academia?" was raised one month ago. It collected a number of responses and many don't seem to be fully aware of this. With more widespread knowledge about the recommendations, it may be more difficult to continue.

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_the_Vancouver-protocol_for_Authorship_adopted_by_the_Academia

Thanks Nizar and Olav for your insights,

According to my experience, defining rules and regulations does not help, since there are plenty of them out there. The Balloon Professors use fresh students who are not aware of such rules and bully them pretending this is what it is. The students are threatened about their thesis submission, their visa situations, etc. to do the job. Some of the "Balloon Professors" even try to hire students with their native language to create a confidential communication channel with the student which is easier to cover everything up. I guess this problem is getting much more complicated that it seems, particularly for international students who are not familiar with the rules at the host university.

Do you think some universities might just be a little complicit in producing “Balloon Professors?” After all balloon professors do bring the money in as well as prestige to the university!

You are right Jack, and that is the tricky part. Of course it is a free lunch for the professor and sometimes universities in short term. However, if a whistleblower blows at the right time the consequences for the University would be huge. On the other hand, the spectrum of misconducts Balloon Professors commit is not just bullying students or stealing their work. They normally go through lots of dodgy processes in preparing Government Grant Applications, granting scholarships, publishing fake results, etc. which can negatively affect universities if exposed.

Dear Poola,

You wrote:

" I guess this problem is getting much more complicated that it seems, particularly for international students who are not familiar with the rules at the host university."

If the university really cared, all students would be well informed!

I do agree with your comment:

" If the university really cared, all students would be well informed! "

and it is really sad :(

A very important and interesting question, as we know many of our colleagues who had a full professor degree, and he don't know the basics.

Yes Azzawi, that is why I asked the question!!! I was a victim of one and after that I have been working on this to find a solution at least to help PhD students not to approach them. There are "Balloon Professors" with more than 500 quality papers in known journals but believe me they cannot even read the abstract of any. They have no idea how the papers were written and sometimes they do not remember their own paper.

I must compliment you for using the term 'Balloon Professors' - though I am not aware who coined it. As an 'Associate Professor', who would join the league of 'Professors' in some time - the critical comment made by you has resulted in me going through the memory lane. When I look back I do recollect coming across such "Balloon Professors', yet I must say that most of them were not 'Balloon Professors'. I might have been lucky to get the 'Grounded Professor' as my Ph.D. Supervisor in my formative years and every joint research output of ours had at least 50% contribution in every sense, if not more. My experience with other co-authors also has been largely the same - with 'Professor' contributing immensely into the research work. Now, as a Research Supervisor, I have been careful to let my students evolve as independent researchers with some inputs from my side. I hope that in future also I would remain the same and would not have a publication with my Ph.D. or M.Phil. Students, until and unless, I contribute immensely into it. Each one of us has to take the call - then only, in future, we would be able to prevent 'Balloon Professors' in Academia!

Thanks Akshat,

Many years ago when I was doing my masters I saw this term but in my native language. During my PhD I experienced it !!! so I translated it into English and started a topic. It was painful to witness how students' work are stolen and how their budget is spent on first class flights and 5 star accommodation for a Balloon Professor to present the students' paper. Even the slides and comments were provided by students while the Balloon Professor had no idea what he/she was going to present.

I like the term "Ballon Professor"

In our university, students are always considered first author, to give credit for their efforts. However, supervisor, being mentor always get second place

At many universities, "Balloon Professors" work nearly explicitly & they may be under the auspices of some "powerful" persons. These "fake" academics think that they have some "divine" right to exploit postgraduate students & other colleagues feeling that they will be protected from investigation & penalty.

The whole system of high education requires overhaul otherwise the decline in the quality of graduating students will continue until there are "Balloon Universities" in most parts of the world.

I guess the lack of supervision over academics and the lack of related workshops for students fuel the issue. For most cases, when you track the history of a "Balloon Professor" you find out he/she was a PhD student of his/her parents, parents' colleagues, friends, etc. I believe if somebody experiences a real PhD, he/she will respect the integrity of research.

Thank you, Pooia Lalbakhsh, for opening such discussion that needs more attention from the scientific community. Term “Baloon professors” is very convenient. I allowed myself some reasoning about the suitability of this kind of search algorithm if it will be created someday.

If there will be a tool for the professor's professional knowledge competence audit, we may expect that such kind of results will allow creating “Balloon Professor's index” which may be implemented in University Ranking list worldwide – primarily for evaluation rank of universities.

Balloon_Professors_index= (all balloon professors in university )/( all university professors)

The question reminds the scenario of a detective movie "A Hunt on balloon-professors".

Honest answers, every day we find out more about Professor Ballon, are good at concealing and have convincing arguments for the continuation of the plays, and sometimes contribute to ridicule this phenomenon as if they are not its founders, Their percentage is different in the centers and universities of the world, it is not easy to track them

Thanks Ervin for the formula, however, detecting the number of Balloon Professors at each uni is not straightforward. Believe me, it took me two years to notice that I was being taken advantage of by one of them. They are negatively smart and they work in nasty networks with people like them. They work internationally, exploiting students to do a job and then just add their own names on the paper. The good thing is after a while they become notorious by their own graduates but tens of PhD students had already been used until then !!!

I guess the most important thing is to warn PhD candidates about "Balloon Professors" to cut the harassment chain. Then we can think about punishing dodgy professors or universities.

I think this is a structural and systemic problem that spans across the globe. Unfortunately not much can be done about it because these people are in the higher echelons of academia, well-connected and supported by those who have the power to change things but maintain the status quo. One way I can think of would be a signature campaign where affected parties can write a letter addressing the issue. Such a letter can be sent to the Provost but the necessary supporting documents must be lined up. Be prepared for the consequences if it backfires.

Fantastic coinage here "Ballon Professors". I am sure with the recent trend in Online-Analytics, the scientific community will begin to deal with the sad issue head-on. But it only accentuates the need for everyone to improve and maintain appropriate/quality standards. Platforms like Publons (https://publons.com) is already gaining traction in the area of peer review and supervision. Please, everyone should join immediately. Do not allow the on-going Publons paradigm shift cut you off as an Academics. We must reject/resist "Ballon Professors" vehemently.

Thanks Srini for your idea, however, I tried to inform University Administration; although they were shocked they covered it up to rescue the University's reputation.

Before a paper gets published, it must b thoroughly reviewed right! If a paper is that good to b published then authors must hv put in sufficient efforts to get it to that state. A balloon professor may hv bn the supervisor who guided the paper to its best then, shldnt he/she get credits? My point is, reviewers, journals n publishers want to make it by through minimal efforts n will let anything pass into the market as long as it’s paid for, wen this is so, some will benefit n others will lose out.

Thanks for your idea Etta,

The topic is about a "Balloon Professor" who has NO contribution. Let me tell you a story, when I was a PhD student I wrote a paper and revised it four times for a good journal, and my supervisor was watching YouTube at the office or sometimes did online shopping. When the paper was finished my supervisor put more than 8 other people on my paper. This Super Balloon Professor became the first author and also the corresponding author. I bet that supervisor cannot even read the paper. When I asked about it, the answer was it is what it is, university rules, when I asked about university rules it was too late and the paper had been published. My supervisor had absolutely no contribution, except logging into the submission portal for me to submit. If my supervisor had helped me a little bit as you said I would not have started the topic !!!

Here we are talking about professors with "No Contribution".

Ok Pooia, I get it. That’s really bad, my response was based on a case where the paper is emerging from the Professor’s supervision. Why did u have to go back to him with the paper if he gave no guidance anyway! Well I suggest that promotions and advancemenets in academia should not be based on many 2 and above author publications particularly involving students or research assistants. It’s very clear to me when I pick up a work with multiple authors, the students in it. If that’s all these professors have then they shouldn’t be professors in the first place talkless of becoming balloons.

There should be a strict criteria for authorship although there is Vancouver criteria established by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors in 1988. These specify that authors must do all of four things to qualify: play a part in designing or conducting experiments or processing results; help to write or revise the manuscript; approve the published version; and take responsibility for the article’s contents. But i dont believe any one is following it practically. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors does not count supervision, mentoring or obtaining funding as sufficient for authorship.