Paper mills reflect the multifaceted political, economic and social factors which account for the rise and development of perverse incentives in research communities: they are yet another example of how there is a demand for faking science. It is not just researchers writing articles who are incentivised to recur to fraudulent practices, but also those researchers reviewing articles. From this standpoint, paper mills are both objects of fraud, namely a fraudulent industry with a set of specific technologies and operational modalities, and a concrete reflection of the consequences of performance-oriented governance. The managerial character of research governance takes the form of new public-management-oriented policies, such as national-level performance-based funding (PBF) systems for higher education sectors (Jongbloed, 2001; Nobili Wittau & Seifert, 2024), this contribution presents an overview of the challenges of studying paper mills. Secondly, it critically approaches the issue by investigating the relationship between paper-mill activity and performance incentives driving publications, considering the Chinese context as an example, where providing cash-rewards based on journal metrics and indexation is a frequent practice and where the majority of global paper-mill activity is frequently signalled (Quan et al., 2017). Thirdly, positive examples countering paper mills and quantitative evaluation are discussed. It is argued that a closer analysis of the presence and workings of performance rewarding and evaluation practices can shed more light on the perverse incentives leading to fraud in academia. In light of increasing pressures for rejecting the publish or perish dynamics, this is ever more crucial.
Laura Giovinazzi (Fri,) studied this question.