If we ignore any 'fake' conferences that have been deliberately set up as an outlet for fake papers - which it seems is happening and is shocking. Then, the other side of things is fake papers in legit outlets. This seems to be the result of poor peer review systems. I used to think that paying reviewers would lead to a professionalising of peer review but now I worry that some 'academics' are hustlers and would end up reviewing hundreds of papers just to earn a buck. Maybe having professional editors would help but small journals couldn't afford this. I am not sure what the answer is - perhaps all journals/conferences put papers through checker software as a matter of course and those organisations that do not do this are ignored by the various indices.

Dear Michael,

This is - as Labbé wrote - only a symptom characterising deformation of approach to some scientific fields and a try to earn easy success. It is a consequence of the general ethical decline among some “scientists”. Brave new world…

Please, see some discussions on RG of similar subjects:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Black_market_for_academic_papers_Can_this_be_true

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Who_should_be_among_co-authors_of_the_scientific_paper

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_role_does_good_writing_play_in_publication

https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_much_should_Universities_be_resposible_for_the_the_future_career_of_their_students

The program is a serious effort to demonstrate that computer technology can fool a reader who does not think. I have drawn attention to it for my students, as a light relief from my teaching of research. Superficially each paper looks genuine. Unfortunately the side effect of making the program available is that it has been targeted as a way of creating fraudulent publications that will not be detected as such by illiterate referees.

I like the idea of "Fake Studies", perhaps the final assignment would be to find and expose a plagiarised or fake paper.

Or to look at the good structure of such a paper, without getting lost in the details of what the paper is about or worrying about copyright issues!

I tried the program. It produces complete gibberish, but impressive-looking and with good grammar. It would only fool people who have completely no idea about the supposed subject of the paper.

I wonder though why people bothered to submit this stuff, as attempts to contact the supposed "authors" weren't too succesful apparantly. One reason I can see, is to get participation to a meeting paid. A conditions for travel grants sometimes is the submission of an abstract. Now if you really have no data...

I think, RG has a near perfect solution for this: the Publication (in whatever form, OA is best because of the higher number of potential readers in their role as reviewers) plus Dataset (again Open Data should be preferred to make data accessible for many and to enable reproducibility).

Is this not the product of "Publish or Perish" pressures that academics feel in order to qualify for tenure? Picking an obscure Proceedings is an easier target for a publication than a recognized refereed journal. Since many fields have limited number of journals, competition for those slots is extremely high - whereas conference proceedings tend to accept most submissions.

If we ignore any 'fake' conferences that have been deliberately set up as an outlet for fake papers - which it seems is happening and is shocking. Then, the other side of things is fake papers in legit outlets. This seems to be the result of poor peer review systems. I used to think that paying reviewers would lead to a professionalising of peer review but now I worry that some 'academics' are hustlers and would end up reviewing hundreds of papers just to earn a buck. Maybe having professional editors would help but small journals couldn't afford this. I am not sure what the answer is - perhaps all journals/conferences put papers through checker software as a matter of course and those organisations that do not do this are ignored by the various indices.

This runs far deeper than 'fake conferences'. There is an alarming amount of highly questionable 'research' published in the peer reviewed journals and while peer review is the best form of quality control we have at present it rather reminds us of what Churchill said about democracy. Publish or perish is the worst dogma to have poisoned science and academia since the inquisition. I am saddened by the amount of 'me too' publishing in the journals and similarly by the amount of spurious navel gazing type of research going on in the biomed sciences. It may be the case that research advances our knowledge and understanding but it is not the fake stuff we need to worry about. It is the mountain of "no s*** Sherlock" research results that fill the strictly rationed column inches in the journals.

There is a big problem in the experimental science that it is hard to find qualified reviewers for all the manuscripts that are submitted.

I think Dr Labbé is doing good work that will help keep editors sharp. Remember the name of the publishers and journal names that have published the fake papers and don't use them.

Regarding Dr. Dowdens comment I think the Publishers and Editors that had to redraw the fake papers would have claimed that it was impossible to get such a manuscript published until they saw the study. I don't think the same experiment has been performed in social science yet.

What! A computer generated article? What is that again? Why do people do such things? What kind of satisfaction do they get out of that?

Just my 2 cents here...

Since we live in the age of DOI and online publishing, I think that a trial period of online exposure of every article, prior to its final acceptance, would be a good way to deal with fake/low quality papers.

To be more specific, after the initial peer-review from the referees and the decision of acceptance by the editor, the article could be published online, classified as "Pending Final Acceptance" or something similar. During this period, anyone with enough credentials to prove his/her expertise in the field, will be able to Vote Up (for statistical purposes) or Vote Down (with appropriate comments/suggestions to the editor. Only comments from reliable sources should be accepted).

At the end of the trial period, the editor can decide if the Article can undergo the final stage of acceptance and Publication or if the authors should revise/resubmit/recall the paper.

I know that there are potential flaws in this procedure, but maybe it's a step to the right direction.

Dear Henk,

Painting a famous painting again is one thing, while writing a computer generated meaningless article is an absolute nonsense. This kind of a thing is not always related to money. It may perhaps be called a joke. What else?

@Hermanta: Instant "gratification".

No need to plagiarise any more!

@Henk, @Hemanta, you can use a digital processing method to transform paintings into new artworks (or fake ones). They call this paintshopping, I think.

There is really egg on the faces of Springer and IEEE.