China cracking down on fraud in academic publishing

Science : The China Association for Science and Technology, which has been investigating dozens of scientists caught in peer-review scams, is now demanding that offenders return their research funding. The problem first surfaced in 2012, and since then scores of authors around the world have had their papers retracted by international journals. The scandal has been particularly prevalent in China, where considerable pressure is exerted on researchers to get papers published in order to further their careers. Some publishers have noted that much of the blame for the fraudulent peer reviews falls on so-called paper brokers, which are commonly used by Chinese researchers for their language editing services but which also help authors secure peer reviews. Many such brokers have been implicated in scams, including purchasing authorship of accepted papers and ghostwriting papers. Six editing companies have now formed the Alliance for Scientific Editing in China to establish stricter ethics policies, and journals are being encouraged to investigate authors more closely.