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Daily Maverick
8 hours ago
- Science
- Daily Maverick
Crossed Wires: The swindling of science and the explosion of academic retractions
Scientific fraud was rare before the internet. In 1990, only 50 papers were retracted across the academic spectrum. In 2023-24, there were 45,000 retractions. Since childhood I have retained a quaint and somewhat naïve picture of the 'scientist', a breed I have always thought heroic. I picture a slightly socially awkward man or woman of uncommon genius and determination, who rises above the daily concerns of mere mortals to live a life of the mind, feeding their curiosity and using their powers of observation and logic to discover the nature of … anything and everything we care about. It's a silly idea, of course — most scientists are no more or less awkward than anyone else. Many of them are not geniuses either, merely smart enough to earn a PhD and follow a career in scientific research. And now it seems they are just as likely to be flawed and fallible as the rest of us, which is a great disappointment to me. Naïveté is often stalked by the small stings of letdown. A recent article in The New York Times about the rise of fraud in scientific (and other academic) publishing sent me down a rabbit hole, perhaps because I didn't want to believe it. After being submerged for a while, I resurfaced with a single disenchanted question — oh my word, what has happened to my heroes? Take Larry Richardson. A mathematician who racked up 130 citations in four years on Google Scholar, relating to a dozen papers on complex mathematical subjects he had written. Except that Larry is a cat who belonged to Northwestern University graduate student Reese Richardson's grandmother. The papers were all 'gibberish', according to Richardson. It was an experiment he dreamt up with another graduate student to test how easy it is to fake citations. Having many citations of your work means potentially a better job or promotion, a higher salary or tenure. The papers were eventually taken down by Google Scholar, but the citations remain (full story here). This is an amusing incident, but it reflects a growing problem. Broken model Scientific fraud was rare until about 2010. Scientific discovery, its methodologies and results are almost entirely mediated by the global academic publishing industry, which has always wielded enormous responsibility and power when it comes to which papers are selected for publication. There is a well-established process of filtering, editorship and peer review, and, historically, retractions were rare enough to sometimes make mass media headlines, such as the retraction in 2010, 12 years after publication, of the Andrew Wakefield paper that sought to draw a linkage between MMR vaccines and autism, the effects of which are still being felt today. Before the internet launched in the mid-1990s, there were about 6,000 scholarly journals (across all disciplines) which printed about 600,000 articles a year (according to Web of Science). The journals were largely governed by professional bodies, and high printing costs meant small distributions and short individual submissions to restrict journal page length. The internet broke that model. Print costs went to zero, as did distribution costs, and journal length was no longer a constraint. Add to this the increasing pressure to 'publish or perish', the astonishing rise of research in China and India, the salary arms race for top talent, and the rise of 'open access' (free) academic journals, and you have a perfect storm for deception and outright fraud in what is euphemistically called the 'academic prestige' industry. Those tame figures from the 1990s have exploded into an estimated 24,000 journals and four million articles this year. Most of the journals are of poor quality, with questionable review policies, generated by 'paper mills' — a vast global ecosystem of commercial research paper factories. An unscrupulous academic can simply order up a paper or, even more shadily, just pay for an author's slot. Until recently, the papers were written by ghostwriters with some experience and a skilful hand at plagiarism. But things have changed since 2003. Guess who writes the papers now? AI. And they are getting better, sometimes sliding through strict peer review. Unsurprisingly, the good guys are pushing back. For instance, in 2023-24, a publication called Retraction Watch reported 45,000 retractions across the academic spectrum (which includes the humanities, but the fraud is mainly in the sciences). In 1990, only 50 papers were retracted. From 50 retractions to 45,000 in 35 years is alarming, to say the least (China leads the walk of shame by a factor of five). It is interesting to note that even this number may be underestimated — the prestigious publication Nature reports that there may be hundreds of thousands of suspect papers as yet undetected in the scholarly publication canon. There are other pushbacks from the industry. Cross-journal collaborations are seeking out fraudulent papers (the two best known are STM Integrity Hub and United2Act), and there are new technologies which scan papers and alert when there is a hint of suspicion, like Papermill Alarm and the Problematic Paper Screener. Amateur sleuths and whistleblowers also play a critical role. AI's unstoppable march Academics who are caught are sanctioned, but I fear that this is a losing battle because of AI's unstoppable march. The technology is improving so rapidly that it is inevitable that detection technologies will lag behind the ingenuity of cheaters, just as they have in other areas of AI encroachment. Also, legitimate scientific breakthroughs are increasingly being made by AI, and the resulting papers will also be written by AI. The AI papers may be worthy contributions, but unethical researchers will find it tempting to claim authorship if they can get away with it. Have AI papers made it through to any reliable journals? The evidence is increasingly yes. For instance, there was a high-profile episode in 2024 when a Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology article published AI-generated figures that were anatomically nonsensical; the paper passed editorial checks and peer review but was later retracted after community scrutiny. There is a further challenge. It takes time to retract a paper. There are legal issues at play; authors can sue. Retractors must be incredibly careful and thorough. It took 11 years for the Wakefield autism paper to be retracted. Timelines are much shorter now, but, until the paper is retracted, it forms part of our knowledge base and may be acted upon by the industry (for instance, in drug development). What does this mean for the rest of us? Some malfeasance in academic publishing is certainly regrettable, but perhaps not much more than that? Some unnecessary expense is incurred, perhaps some unfair advantage is gained by crooked researchers. One could sigh and say that the world still moves on — after all, there are crooks all over the place, not just in research. Which brings me back to my admiration for the field of research and discovery, particularly in the sciences. This grand human endeavour, the application of intellect, experience, creativity and rigour to satisfy our unquenchable curiosity — surely this is where truth and honesty matter more than anywhere else? Or is that just my naïveté talking? DM Maverick451 in SA and Legend Times Group in the UK/EU, available now.
Deccan Herald
02-08-2025
- Science
- Deccan Herald
Why Indian academic research needs a rethink
Indian higher education has significantly transformed in recent years, with academic institutions increasingly emphasising research output, global visibility and competitive rankings. Central to this is the surge in publication activity across public and private universities. From 26,664 in 2001, the number of faculty publications shot up to 99,411 in 2011, and 3,70,595 in pressure to publish in indexed journals, particularly those listed in Scopus and the Web of Science (WoS), has fostered a culture of productivity reckoned in numerical terms that is indifferent to critical inquiry, theoretical originality, and ethical 2020 and 2025, 335 questionable journals were removed by Scopus to preserve research integrity. New Scopus indexed sources were also added: 143 from February 2023 to June 2025, including 57 in June alone. Indian universities continue to prioritise publication counts with serious implications for the credibility and future of research across various to gain: How India can retain its in numbersBetween January 2020 and May 2025, India contributed 16,18,824 papers to Scopus-indexed journals — the highest in the world, ahead of academic powerhouses such as the United States and the United Kingdom, and emerging superpower China. This surge reflects India's expanding research base, increased institutional pressure to publish, and growth in academic publishing ranks third in total research output but only around 19th in H-index, which measures the productivity and impact of research publications. The H-index for Indian publications was 925 in 2024: 71.21% lower than US publications whose H-index is 3,213. This highlights the need to shift policy and academic focus towards enhancing research quality, citation impact, and international collaboration. Australia (H-index: 1,475; 2.1 million published documents) and the Netherlands (H-index:1,471; 1.4 million published documents) have far higher H-index figures than India which published 3.3 million documents. This indicates better average impact per only a negligible number of these Indian-origin papers were among the most cited in their analysis of retracted Indian publications found their numbers per year had increased mainly due to errors, plagiarism, and ethical concerns such as duplicate publication. The situation also extends to entire over qualityCurrently, only 12 Indian journals are categorised as Quartile 1 (Q1) — among the top 25% in their category —I n the Scimago database. This highlights Indian institutions' inability to sustain journals that meet international standards of editorial rigour, peer review, and citation impact. Further, the data indicates that most journals originating in India occupy Quartile 3 (Q3) and Quartile 4 (Q4) positions — the bottom half in their categories. Such journals tend to have limited visibility, weak influence, and insufficient scholarly increase in publication numbers should translate into knowledge production and its dissemination. That does not seem to be happening. Instead, the prevailing academic environment in India has turned research publication into a bureaucratic hurdle, rather than an intellectual pursuit. Faculty promotions, salary increments, and institutional funding are frequently tied to journal publications indexed in Scopus or WoS. While such metrics are intended to ensure accountability and global competitiveness, in practice, they are incentivising a utilitarian approach. Article publication has become about fulfilling quantifiable benchmarks, with little regard for the depth, relevance, critical thinking, or originality of the work produced.A 2024 study found that the pressure to publish has led many scholars to engage in plagiarism, data fabrication, and salami-slicing, the slicing of research for one paper into multiple publications to inflate numbers. Plagiarism, both of external sources and self-plagiarism — reusing one's own published work without attribution to make it appear new — is increasingly normalised under the pretext of expediency. Data fabrication and manipulation of research findings are unethical practices that severely undermine research integrity. Similarly, salami slicing further erodes scholarly coherence and intellectual unhealthy practices may increase the overall volume of academic publications, but their impact remains on WestThe poor representation of Indian journals in the top quartile suggests Indian scholars are heavily reliant on foreign publications. However, a 2016 study found these journals often operate with high rejection rates, limited acceptance of region-specific empirical studies, and editorial frameworks that may not fully accommodate perspectives from the Global rejections are particularly common for submissions from India. While editorial selectivity is a necessary component of journal curation, evidence suggests such practices disproportionately affect scholars from developing countries, especially when their work challenges dominant paradigms or employs non-Western theoretical needs a robust indigenous publishing infrastructure that fosters scholarly aptitude. However, many Indian journals suffer from inadequate funding and weak editorial governance. Peer review processes are often inconsistent and compromised by personal networks. Editorial decisions are often driven by considerations other than scholarly the problem is the proliferation of predatory journals in India, which often publish research work for a fee with little or no peer review. In a system where the number of publications is prioritised over their legitimacy or influence, predatory outlets offer a quick and accessible route to meeting performance criteria. The University Grants Commission's (UGC) CARE list had often identified predatory or cloned journals. This significantly aided scholars but the UGC stopped updating the CARE list in October and subsequently announced that it would not update the list any more. Need for holistic approachMoreover, Indian academics largely use books by foreign authors as core reference material in their syllabi. This presents a paradox: Indian scholars publish extensively, yet this knowledge is not adequately acknowledged within academic discourse, especially in higher Indian students are increasingly migrating abroad for higher education to countries such as the US, the UK, and Canada, though these countries' academic contributions are relatively less in terms of publication volume. This further underlines the complex dynamics of perceived quality and academic capital in global academia must fundamentally rethink how research is evaluated, supported, and disseminated. Universities and regulatory bodies must avoid excessive reliance on publication numbers as the primary metric of academic performance. A holistic approach that considers research impact, methodological innovation, and community engagement must be applied. Faculty evaluations should include unbiased qualitative assessments of scholarly contributions, and ethical research practices embedded at every stage of the academic career, from doctoral training to tenure in faculty assessment should include consideration of research relevance, methodological innovation, and impact on policy and society. Focus must be on mandatory ethics training, strict anti-plagiarism mechanisms, fostering indigenous and regional scholarship, and encouraging research in regional languages focused on local contexts and indigenous country must invest in its own publishing ecosystem, including editorial training, peer-review reform, funding for journal sustainability, and collaborations with global publishing networks. Developing rigorous peer review standards can enable credible academic contributions towards the development of indigenous knowledge. These initiatives will help Indian academia reclaim the university as a place of critical thought, ethical engagement, and meaningful and inclusive knowledge MR and Viji B are assistant professors, Department of Economics, CHRIST (Deemed to be University), article was first published under Creative Commons by The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.
Time Out
18-06-2025
- Business
- Time Out
Seven U.S. schools dominated the top 10 of U.S. News' best universities list
U.S. News & World Report just dropped its 2025–2026 Best Global Universities rankings, and America made a strong showing once again. Of the top 10 universities worldwide, seven are right here in the U.S. The rankings—drawn from over 2,250 schools in more than 100 countries—measure academic research output and reputation using 13 data-driven indicators including scholarly impact, global presence and serious brainpower. Leading the pack (no surprises here) is Harvard University in Cambridge, MA, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (also in Cambridge) and Stanford University (in Stanford, CA), bringing tech innovation and entrepreneurial edge to the table. The University of California, Berkeley lands at number six, proving that public universities can still outgun the Ivies when it comes to research heft. University of Washington, Seattle—a quiet powerhouse—takes eighth, just ahead of Yale (in New Haven, CT) and Columbia (in New York, NY), at Nos. 9 and 10, respectively. The U.K. holds its own with Oxford and Cambridge at Nos. 4 and 5, and University College London at number seven. But the U.S. still leads in presence and performance: 280 American schools made the rankings, second only to China's 397. The list uses data from Clarivate's Web of Science and InCites platforms, ensuring schools are measured by actual impact, not just name recognition. For students eyeing degrees that translate across borders—or universities with real research clout—this is the go-to list. Bottom line: If you want to study at a university with global reach, cutting-edge research, and serious prestige chances are high you'll be headed to the U.S. The 10 best global universities, according to U.S. News Harvard University (U.S.) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (U.S.) Stanford University (U.S.) University of Oxford (U.K.) University of Cambridge (U.K.) University of California Berkeley (U.S.) University College London (U.K.) University of Washington Seattle (U.S.) Yale University (U.S.)
Morocco World
11-06-2025
- Business
- Morocco World
Five Moroccan Universities Among Top 2,000
Rabat – The Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) has placed Mohammed V University in Rabat among the top 5 percent of universities worldwide, securing the top national position for the sixth consecutive year. According to the CWUR's latest 'Top 2000 Universities in the World' ranking, only 2,000 out of 21,462 global higher education institutions were included in this elite list—among them five Moroccan universities. Alongside Mohammed V University in Rabat, the four others are Cadi Ayyad University in Marrakech, Hassan II University of Casablanca, Mohammed I University in Oujda, and Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University in Fez– showcasing Morocco's growing prominence in international higher education. Mohammed V University achieved notable rankings both on a regional and international level: 13th among the top 66 universities in the Arab world, 15th among the top 63 universities in Africa, and 992nd globally—placing it within the top 4.7 percent worldwide. In research quality, the university ranked 947th globally, underscoring the strength and impact of its scientific contributions. These international accolades reinforce Mohammed V University's strategic standing in Rabat and its unwavering commitment to academic excellence, cutting-edge research, and openness to both national and global communities. This accomplishment also reflects the university's continuous progress, climbing 15 places compared to last year's ranking. CWUR's ranking methodology is based on four key indicators: quality of scientific research (40%), quality of academic training provided to students (25%), professional success of graduates holding leadership roles in major global companies (25%), and the academic reputation of faculty recognized with prestigious scientific awards (10%). The ranking is based on data from the international scientific database 'Web of Science,' which monitors publications, citations, and journal quality over the past ten years. The top three positions this year were claimed by American institutions Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Stanford University, followed by England's University of Cambridge and University of Oxford in fourth and fifth place, respectively.
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Clarivate Partners with CRKN to Further Canada's Research Goals
Web of Science Provides Expanded Access to Essential Research Tools and Data for Canadian Libraries and Research Institutions LONDON, June 3, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Clarivate Plc (NYSE:CLVT), a leading global provider of transformative intelligence, today announced a multi-year partnership with the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN), a consortium of libraries and research institutions in Canada. The agreement provides 55 Canadian universities with expanded access to the Web of Science and is designed to enhance inter-member research collaborations, improving accessibility to Web of Science content for all members. The Web of Science platform is home to the world's first and most trusted publisher-neutral citation index – Web of Science Core Collection – and connects developments along the entire research lifecycle to that trustworthy core. It streamlines the discovery of content from the world's leading journals alongside conference papers, books, dissertations and theses, datasets, patents, preprints, awarded grants, policy documents and more. For CRKN members, new extended access to the Web of Science API will allow researchers to use the rich Web of Science metadata to support their research projects. Access to the Derwent Innovations Index and the Policy Citation Index will help members better understand the societal impact of their outputs. Craig Olsvik, Director, Content Program at CRKN, said: "CRKN is pleased to have renewed our agreement with Clarivate for Web of Science through 2029. Expanded access to Web of Science content will serve Canadian researchers across the country, and we're particularly happy to now include extended access to the Web of Science API for our members." Bar Veinstein, President of Academia and Government at Clarivate, said: "We are delighted to extend our partnership with CKRN. Canada holds a prominent and often collaborative position in academic research globally, with its research contributions surpassing the international average in terms of innovation and patents. "This new agreement underscores the value we offer to Canadian institutions and researchers through the Web of Science. We remain committed to supporting the research community in Canada by providing the necessary tools and resources to foster innovation and discovery which ultimately drives societal impact." About ClarivateClarivate is a leading global provider of transformative intelligence. We offer enriched data, insights & analytics, workflow solutions and expert services in the areas of Academia & Government, Intellectual Property and Life Sciences & Healthcare. For more information, please visit Media contact:Rebecca Krahenbuhl, Senior Manager, External Communications, Academia & Governmentnewsroom@ View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE Clarivate Plc Sign in to access your portfolio
