SCIENCE science.org 15 APRIL 2022 • VOL 376 ISSUE 6590 231S
ince 2019, Anna Abalkina has been
monitoring a website that offers an
illicit way for scientists to burnish
their CVs. The site, operated from
Russia, openly offers to sell author-
ship slots on soon-to-be published
scientific papers, for fees ranging from sev-
eral hundred dollars to nearly $5000.
Abalkina, a sociologist at the Free Uni-
versity of Berlin, has documented what ap-
pears to be a flourishing business on the
site, http://www.123mi.ru. Since it debuted in De-
cember 2018, she has analyzed more than
1000 advertisements posted there and
found at least 419 that seemed to match
manuscripts that later appeared in dozens
of different journals, she reported in a pre-
print posted on arXiv in March.
More than 100 of the papers she iden-
tified were published in 68 journals
run by established publishers, includ-
ing Elsevier, Oxford University Press,
Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, Wiley-
Blackwell, and Wolters Kluwer, althoughmost of these were specialized publica-
tions. Russian authors outnumbered any
other nationality on the website’s tally of
recent contracts.
Run by International Publisher LLC,
the site is one of many illicit “paper mills”
that leaders in scientific publishing worry
are increasingly corrupting the literature
by selling bogus authorship or prewritten
papers. But its scale and brazenness are
unusual, as are the insights Abalkina has
gleaned into its workings.
Her findings are “fascinating,” says
Elisabeth Bik, an independent science
integrity expert in San Francisco who be-
lieves they reflect fallout from Russia’s
2012 decision to set policies tying research-
ers’ promotions and financial rewards to
their volume of scholarly publications.
“It is another example of what can go
wrong in scientific publishing if the pres-
sure to publish is increased,” says Bik, who
has studied paper mills based in China.
To lure prospective customers, the ad-
vertisements on http://www.123mi.ru provide
tantalizing details about each paper, whichit claims are already accepted for publica-
tion. They include its topic, the number of
authors, and sometimes its abstract. The
advertisements also provide hints about
the prestige and impact of the journal in
which the paper will appear, including
whether it is indexed in the Scopus and
Web of Science databases.
Prices for authorship slots vary depend-
ing on their position in the authors list and
the impact factor of the journal, Abalkina
found. Costs have varied from about 15,
rubles ($175) to 410,000 rubles ($4800),
with first author slots usually the most
expensive. Based on these fees, Abalkina
estimates that from 2019 to 2021, Interna-
tional Publisher raked in about $6.5 mil-
lion. (The website does not specify how
much its customers actually paid.) To keep
the deals hush-hush, the contract includes
a confidentiality clause.
The advertisements withhold the name
of the journal, which the purchaser is told
only after paying the fee. Abalkina’s pa-
per quotes claims by the website that it
has split its fees with some unidentified
journals to ensure their participation in
the scheme.
Several of the largest publishers of jour-
nals identified in Abalkina’s study—Oxford
University Press, Springer Nature, Taylor
& Francis, and Wiley-Blackwell—say they
are examining papers Abalkina brought to
their attention. Elsevier has procedures to
detect authorship changes after a manu-
script is submitted, which editors must
approve, a spokesperson said. As for the
papers identified by Abalkina, “there were
few indications of authorship changes oc-
curring after submission.”
Chris Graf, director of research integ-
rity at Springer Nature, declined to dis-
cuss specifics but called paper mills “bad
for both the research and the publishing
communities. Alongside investigating indi-
vidual cases and retracting compromised
papers, we’ve been reviewing our processes
and making investments in technologies to
help us identify attempts to manipulate
our systems.”
Science contacted International
Publisher—which says it is headquartered in
Moscow and has offices in Ukraine, Kazakh-
stan, and Iran—for comment multiple times
by email, phone, and WhatsApp but received
no response. Its chief editor, according to her
LinkedIn page, is Ukraine-based philologist
Ksenia Badziun, who says she graduated
from Taras Shevchenko National University
of Kyiv. The company has continued to oper-
ate during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Science also contacted 20 corresponding
authors of papers identified by Abalkina;
most did not respond. One, who asked not toPUBLISHINGBy Dalmeet Singh ChawlaHow a site peddles author slots
in reputable publishers’ journals
Advertisements on Russian website promised to add names
to articles that appeared in dozens of journals
IMAGE: VALERII MINHIROV/ISTOCK.COM; ALIAKSEI BROUKA/ISTOCK.COM; OKSANA SAZHNIEVA/ISTOCK.COM, ADAPTED BY C. AYCOCK/
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