浙大论文挂名Anzen Science Company https://sci.zone/anzensci is offering to pay researchers a sum of money for putting the names of clients who contributed nothing to the research as co-authors on peer-reviewed research papers, is it legitimate? PS

cluwak (32)in #cn • 3 years ago

Prateeksha Sharma, Ph.D., Researcher with decent publishing record

In other words they want to build up the academic profiles of certain individuals because they have money to offer!

Technically and academically speaking this is fraud but I am aware that this happens a lot with science, especially pharma companies- who get ghost written articles published all the time. I am not sure if the question of legitimacy even arises, because anything can be proven to be legitimate. The thing is what purpose does it serve. If someone is dishonest enough to just want their name on a publication without having done the labour or knowing the process the issue is not just fraud, the issue is manifold, and a cause for serious concern.

So if the researcher is in such a situation that they are willing to accept payment to have second, third or fourth authors with their work who have not done any real work, how accurate is such research and god only knows how much more fraud has gone into it, how results have been fudged, timelines tweaked or data botched up! Research is FULL of all sorts of unscrupulous people doing fraud- science is not what we think it is!

There is no lack of legitimacy because nobody can say who was involved in the study or whether the co-authors participated. The issue is the integrity of everyone involved and the quality of such work. But this is happening all the time in every field of research, in academia and industry