China takes on the uphill task of cracking down on 'pervasive' academic fraud – WION

In China, it’s not uncommon to pay for research to be done by ghostwriters and agencies that provide a ‘one-stop’ service, from writing research papers to getting them published in low-key journals.
China is gearing up to crack down on fraudulent academic research ecosystem in the country following reports of thousands of works being retracted by Chinese experts over the last years. According to reports, some 14,000 papers were withdrawn in 2023 alone for poor-quality or half-baked research, with three-quarters of them involving a Chinese co-author.
Despite the government’s efforts, it might be hard to fix this problem in Chinese academia because it’s ‘so pervasive.’
The Chinese Ministry of Education last month gave deadlines to universities for submitting a full list of academic articles that journals have retracted over the past three years, allowing it to assess the extent of the problem and decide on future courses of action.
In China, it’s not uncommon to pay for research to be done by ghostwriters and agencies that provide a ‘one-stop’ service, from writing research papers to getting them published in low-key journals.
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“If you have no problem financially, you can let others do your research for you. Whether it is publishing a paper or finding a journal, they have such a one-stop service,” Sun Fugui, a former graduate student at Ludong University in Shandong Province, was quoted as saying by VOA Chinese.
“And it’s not just students, even teachers use these ghostwriters,” he added.
Quality is hardly taken into consideration while publishing such scientific papers. “The purpose of these journals is not to publish good papers or to let others see their great academic achievements,” Sun said, adding, “Their purpose is to meet students’ and teachers’ need to publish papers.”
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Experts also believe that political intervention in academia also leads to the production of low-quality articles and papers. “The transparency of information, freedom of academic exchanges, and access to the Chinese research, all are heavily controlled by the state in China,” said Yun Sun, a senior fellow specialising in China at a think tank, the Stimson Center.
Some say value judgments in the universities are made ultimately by political authorities, which often lead to flawed publications. Adding to that, plagiarism is also a major problem, which has exacerbated over the last year due to the increased use of Artificial Intelligence-powered bots.
(With inputs from agencies)

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