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Surge in number of ‘extremely productive’ authors concerns scientists

Some researchers publish a new paper every five days, on average. Data trackers suspect not all their manuscripts were produced through honest labour.
  1. Gemma Conroy
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Up to four times more researchers pump out more than 60 papers a year than less than a decade ago1. Saudi Arabia and Thailand saw the sharpest uptick in the number of such scientists over the past few years, according to a preprint posted on bioRxiv on 24 November. The increase in these ‘extremely productive’ authors raises concerns that some researchers are resorting to dubious methods to publish extra papers.

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Nature 625, 14-15 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-03865-y

References

  1. Ioannidis, J. P. A., Collins, T. A. & Baas, J. Preprint at bioRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.11.23.568476 (2023).

  2. Ioannidis, J. P. A., Klavans, R. & Boyack, K. W. Nature 561, 167–169 (2018).

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