ArticlePLoS biology2024
A call for research to address the threat of paper mills.
Article in PLoS biology, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- The role of reviewers in the era of systematic reviews and meta-analysis: A practical guide for researchers.Biomolecules & biomedicine · 2025Guideline
- How publish-or-perish culture drives evidence fragmentation in oncology.Annals of medicine · 2026Article
- Quantifying new threats to health and biomedical literature integrity from rapidly scaled publications and problematic research.Journal of clinical epidemiology · 2026Article
- Journal of Global Health's GUidelines for Authors on Requesting and DIsclosing changes in Authorship Nominations (GUARDIAN).Journal of global health · 2026Article
- A call for coordinated action on problematic papers in non-coding RNA research.Zoological research · 2026Article
- Publication pollution: The erosion of research ethics in the age of metrics.Journal of education and health promotion · 2026Article
- Dramatic increases in redundant publications in the Generative AI era.BMC medicine · 2025Article
- Safeguarding Open Science from exploitative practices.PLoS medicine · 2025Article
- The rapid growth in Mendelian randomization studies.European journal of epidemiology · 2025Article
- Open science and transparency are our strongest tools in the fight against fraudulent publishing activities.PLoS medicine · 2025Article
- The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Journal of Global Health's Guidelines for Reporting Analyses of Big Data Repositories Open to the Public (GRABDROP): preventing 'paper mills', duplicate publications, misuse of statistical inference, and inappropriate use of artificial intelligence.Journal of global health · 2025Article
- Citation Contamination by Paper Mill Articles in Systematic Reviews of the Life Sciences.JAMA network open · 2025Article
- Explosion of formulaic research articles, including inappropriate study designs and false discoveries, based on the NHANES US national health database.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Article
- Combating Fake Science in the Age of Generative Artificial Intelligence: A Biomedical Perspective.Missouri medicineArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Research paper mills are covert organizations that provide low-quality or fabricated manuscripts to paying clients. As members of the United2Act Research Working Group, we propose 5 key research questions on paper mills that require resourcing and support.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.