The Threat of Paper Mills to Biomedical and Social Science Journals: The Case of the Tanu.pro Paper Mill in Mind, Brain, and Education

Abstract

Fraudulent published papers were once thought to be rare, but in recent years, there has been growing awareness of coordinated activities by for-profit organizations that charge authors a fee to sell articles and submit them to reputable journals. These are known as paper mills. We reflect here on how Mind, Brain and Education suffered from such an attack in 2022 and 2023, discussing what we have learnt from this experience about how paper mills might operate in biomedical and social sciences, how to identify red flags that an article might be fraudulent, and what steps might be taken to prevent such attacks in future.