Have You Cited a Fake Paper? Here’s How to Check
Fake papers from paper mills are on the rise. Researchers need to be more careful than ever before to ensure only authentic, reliable work is cited. Here are the key signs to check for.
Even if you’ve never heard of “paper mills”, you’ve probably already seen their work: research papers that seem real, but are actually fake. These inauthentic attempts at scientific progress pollute the literature landscape.
There are potentially hundreds of thousands of fake papers in circulation. As of January of this year around 55,000 have already been retracted. These articles can be well-camouflaged, avoiding scrutiny for years. You may have read one yourself in the past few weeks without even realizing it.
Fake papers aren’t just “bad science”, they compromise the work of real scholars. If you call upon these papers in your references for your next literature review, you risk undermining the quality of your own work. But given how hard they can be to spot — how can you avoid this mistake?
In this edition of The Scoop, we dive into fake papers and look at just how widespread they may be, as well as key signs and signals to look for to avoid using them in your own work.
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What are “fake papers” really?
What we refer to as “fake papers” are any published, academic work that falsifies data, methodology, authorship, or some other aspect. Paper mills are the main source of fake literature today. These business operate under the radar, allowing researchers to pay for finished manuscripts that they can submit under their own name. To ensure they pass the peer-review process, some researchers form stable connections or “peer review rings”, guaranteeing publication of the fraudulent work.
Why does it happen? The classic publish-or-perish mentality is again to blame. Pressure is high for researchers to produce work in peer-reviewed journals. Under these strains and demands, some researchers turn to unethical practices like paper mills in order to remain competitive.
Paper mill production has exploded in recent years. Five years ago, publishers were not seeing any ethical cases reported regarding fake papers. As of 2023, this skyrocketed to the thousands.
These fraudulent papers don’t just pose a risk to the academic quality of future work via unruly references. They compromise the entire research landscape and even real-world clinical and medical decisions.
As much as 3% of all medical publications may be the result of paper mills. Other disciplines face similar problems, with a full breakdown visible below.
Given the rise of such papers, it becomes increasingly important for researchers to distinguish paper mill products from genuine publications. Relying on peer-review or publisher quality is no longer an option, particularly as AI use only increases, further exacerbating the issue.
How to spot fake papers: Quiz time
Papers from paper mills can blend in really well.
Try to guess which of these 2024 papers is real:
Paper A: Utilizing Artificial Intelligence Among Patients With Diabetes: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Paper B: Diagnostic Accuracy of Artificial Intelligence-Based Automated Diabetic Retinopathy Screening in Real-World Settings: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Can you tell?
That’s the difficulty with paper mill work. It looks real, and needs to do so to make it through the system. However, as we dive into these papers in more detail, the evidence starts to build as to which one is real.
Key signs of fake papers
Here are the key indicators that a paper may have come from a paper mill. Keep these in the back of your mind when you explore literature. After you’ve gone through them, take a look back at the quiz, and see if you can figure it out:
1. Generic or strange titles
The first sign that a paper may be fake is the title. Real research is specific. Fake papers often have more generic titles. But, this isn’t always the case. Be sure to check multiple factors when trying to decide if a paper is fake or not.
For example, here’s the name of a paper under investigation and found to have a fake peer review: “The Connotation Between Perioperative Glycemic Control Approach and Sternal Wound Infection in Individuals With Diabetes Mellitus Experiencing Cardiac Surgery: A Meta-Analysis”. This is quite specific, and is an exception to the “generic” rule.
2. Check the journal
Some fake papers tend to target predatory journals which lack a vigorous peer review. But, this isn’t a sure-fire sign, because even reputable journals sometimes have fake papers make it through the process as well. You can check the list of predatory journals here or here.
3. References have fake, self-citing or outdated sources
Review the references to see their quality and validity. Are they valid? Are those papers connected to the field via citations and references? Are there some recent ones or are they all over five years old?
Tip: You can use Litmaps to instantly visualize the article’s references, and see their overall reference and citation counts. Just search for the article and click on “References” in that paper’s details to get a breakdown.
4. Authors aren’t real, or have different backgrounds
Paper mill articles may host an unusual set of authors, which can be a good indicator of the paper’s authenticity. Either the authors are not real, or their research backgrounds are not in the domain the paper is in. Explore each author individually to see if it checks out.
5. Figures are fabricated, inconsistent, or copies from elsewhere
Figures and plots in a paper may be another giveaway that the article is fraudulent.
Experiment with Google Search or Google Lens on the figures of the paper to see if they appear elsewhere on the Internet. Or, review the figures in detail to make sure the make sense with the paper’s contents.
In 2017, a journal realized that eight different papers contained the same image, resulting in retractions. One of the paper’s authors admitted to using a paper mill for that paper.
If you follow these steps to distinguish the example above, you’ll find not all these steps help in every case. Did you manage to guess which of the papers in our quiz above was real? In this case, it’s tricky. The fake paper is from a reputable journal (Cureus by SpringerNature), the abstract is well-worded, and even the authors appear to be valid and on-topic with respect to their backgrounds.
Thankfully, you don’t always need to guess. If an article has been retracted, you’ll see that information on the article page. If you use a tool like Litmaps to search for articles, once you click on the article title to read it, you’ll see that information right away. You can also confirm its retraction state on RetractionWatch.
The real challenge is anticipating which articles are fake, before the journals even notice themselves. After all, you want to use only high-quality, reliable sources in your own research.
How do you distinguish real studies from fake ones? Share any tips or tricks with the research community in the comments below. As this becomes only more difficult with AI and large-scale paper mills, it becomes more important than ever to work together to uphold academic integrity.
Resources
China’s supreme court calls for crack down on paper mills, March 2025
Bogus scientific papers are enriching fraudsters and slowing lifesaving medical research, March 2025
Paper mills: the ‘cartel-like’ companies behind fraudulent scientific journals, 2024
How big is science’s fake-paper problem?, Nov 2023
How Sydney cancer scientist Jennifer Byrne became a research fraud super sleuth, 2017
Publication and Research Integrity in Medical Research (PRIMeR)
Potential predatory scholarly open‑access publishers database, Beall’s List