China has a flourishing academic black market involving scientists, agencies and journal editors, according to a report published in the Science magazine. The report, based on a five-month investigation by a team of reporters, reveals myriad questionable practices, including paying for author slots on papers written by other scientists and buying papers from online brokers.
Looking into 27 agencies that trade in SCI papers - papers in journals indexed by Thomson Reuters' Science Citation Index (SCI) - the investigation found authorship fees ranging from US$1,600 to US$26,300.
SCI papers - especially those published in journals with a high impact factor - are so critical to getting promotions in China that researchers are willing to shell out for them, says the report's lead author Mara Hvistendahl, a contributing editor with Science who has been based in Shanghai for seven years.
China has become a powerhouse in scientific publishing. The number of papers originating in China on SCI Expanded - an information database of more than 8,500 of the world's leading scientific and technical journals - skyrocketed from 41,417 in 2002 to 193,733 in 2012, ranking it second in the world, after the US, the Science report says.
But corrupt practices taint that achievement. The investigation began with a tip-off that a sales agent for a Chinese company called Wanfang Huizhi was selling authorships for a forthcoming scientific paper to be published in Elsevier's International Journal of Biochemistry and Cell Biology. According to the report, the company was selling the title of co-first author for the paper, which described a potential strategy for curbing drug resistance in cancer cells, for 90,000 yuan (US$14,800).
The Wanfang Huizhi website, which was accessible before the investigation report was published, has ceased operating.
