Massive European Paper Mill Exposed: Over 1500 Fake Research Papers Discovered

An investigation uncovered a vast network of Ukrainian companies, potentially Europe's largest paper mill, churning out fake or low-quality research papers and selling authorships. Researchers traced over 60 suspicious email domains linked to 1517 published papers, involving over 4500 researchers from 460 universities across 46 countries. The papers exhibited hallmarks of paper mills: fabricated data, plagiarism, irrelevant citations, and peer review manipulation. While the mill claims to offer legitimate services, website wording suggests papers are produced to order or authorships are sold. This highlights the urgent need to combat academic paper mills.