The article “China’s Publication Bazaar” published in a November issue of Science (Science 2013; 342: 1035-1039) reports on some troubling practices concerning scientific publication that are occurring in China where the pressure to publish in recognized journals is significant especially for young investigators.

In a new type of fraudulent practice, agencies and individuals sell authorship in articles. Ghost written articles are offered to authors for anywhere from US 1600.00 to nearly US 15,000.00!  Obviously the price varies according to the position in the author’s list desired. Some of these paid authors are added to articles already accepted even without the knowledge of the original authors. Some imaginative agencies take articles published in Chinese, translated them to English, and then sell authorship in the translated copies which are submitted to journals listed in the Thomson Reuters’ Science Citation Index (that is, those with an Impact Factor). Some outfits even have crews of graduate students writing articles which are later put up for sale or one can call these agencies and “order” a specific type of article. Some of the most common articles for sale are literature meta-analyses since they do not require any laboratory or clinical data collection. One website boasts: “It’s unbelievable: you can publish SCI papers without doing experiments.” Meta-analyses from China increased more than 16 times faster than those from the US in the last 10 years.

These practices have not gone un-noticed by the Chinese authorities. In the same Science issue an editorial from China addresses these concerns (Science 2013; 342: 1019). Without doubt, good research is being done in China and frauds as the one described here only mar this country’s image and penalize honest researchers. Educating scientists and eliminating the Impact Factor as a measure used for promotion are only two ideas being implemented in China to curb fraudulent publications.