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djinnisequoia t1_j0frvjg wrote

I really did read this paper, but I'm still having trouble identifying the incentive for purchasers of these spurious articles. It appears that some people are buying authorship slots -- why would they want to do that? Simply to have been published? Why would others want to buy papers of questionable provenance? I understand that actually conducting research can be prohibitively expensive; but what problem are the fake papers solving for the buyers?

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spontaneous_igloo OP t1_j0fvt6c wrote

If physicians are expected to perform research and publish that research in addition to practicing medicine full-time, then their careers may be on the line if they do not publish. Until recently, many institutions in China also awarded bonuses for publications (article). Additionally, bibliometric indicators of productivity and impact are used in hiring/promotion/tenure decisions worldwide.

In terms of the risk/reward of buying/securing authorship on paper mill products, it is worth noting that very few paper mill products are actually detected, and far fewer still are ever retracted. Thus, reward can be enormous for the client while risk is relatively small.

>Hospital-based clinicians may be particularly vulnerable to publication quotas (34,35,45,46), as their time, training and resources are directed towards patient care as opposed to research (47).

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djinnisequoia t1_j0i6y54 wrote

Thank you. Oh dear, that is going to skew data to everyone's detriment. Results in research should not be a metric in and of themselves. It defeats the whole purpose.

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