Science just ain’t what it used to be: Multiple research journals closing because of fake news deluge

_{Summarised by Centrist}

The closure of several scientific journals at New Jersey publisher Wiley is the result of a growing wave of fraud in the scientific research publication industry. 

The retractions and lost revenue due to the growing scandal is a major blow to the multi-billion dollar business of academic publishing. 

The Wall Street Journal is reporting the 217-year-old publisher, this month, announced that – following retractions of 11,300 papers – at least 19 of its journals will close. 

For Wiley, which publishes more than 2,000 journals, the problem came to light two years ago, shortly after it paid nearly $300m USD for Hindawi, a company founded in Egypt in 1997. 

In 2022, a little more than a year after the purchase, scientists online noticed peculiarities in dozens of studies from journals in the Hindawi family of about 250 publications. 

Journalist Nidhi Subbaraman reports: “This large-scale fraud… threatens the legitimacy of the nearly [$30b USD] academic publishing industry and the credibility of science as a whole.” 

The website Retraction Watch and independent researchers have tracked a range of paper mills responsible for the epidemic of fake research reports and found them in multiple countries including Russia, Iran, Latvia, China and India. 

Read more over at The Wall Street Journal via MSN