In 2023, cases involving paper mills and authorship commerce in Peru were exposed by mass media and television. A study by authors Joel Alhuay-Quispe and Victoria Yance-Yupari reveals a more detailed description of this fraud.
A recent report – conducted by an Investigative Commission of the Congress of the Republic of Peru from November 30, 2023, to August 1, 2024 – documented alleged scientific fraud through the purchase and sale of academic research. The report identifies three possible criminal networks responsible for transactions amounting to 11.42 million soles (approximately USD 3.05 million). This report also provided evidence about WhatsApp groups that were offering co-authorship of articles, identifying Peruvian research professors as owners.
Additionally, this report mentions the names of 75 faculty members and individuals certified as researchers (referred to as RENACYT in Spanish) by CONCYTEC from Peruvian universities who are potentially involved in paper mills and the sale of authorship. Their ORCID and Scopus author IDs were used to retrieve publications from Scopus in order to analyse the co-authorship network.
More: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/leap.2014
