Shadow market of science: Professor’s battle against stolen research

The world of academia thrives on trust between mentors and their students. For Prof Rajeev Kumar, a Computer Science & Engineering scholar who once blew the whistle on irregularities at IIT Kharagpur, that trust was shattered.

His years of research on machine learning, generalization, and multimodality surfaced in an international journal without his name.

Instead, his PhD student from JNU appeared as a co-author, alongside names tied to paper mills stretching into Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

By August 2025, the betrayal had reached the Delhi High Court. Prof Kumar filed a petition accusing his student of misappropriating unpublished work and selling it into a shadow market where authorship can be bought and sold.

“The research was entirely conceptualized, defined, and designed by me. At no point were any other authors or collaborators,” he wrote in his plea.

The case centers on three papers that Prof Kumar co-authored with his student and submitted to a Springer journal in the United States between August 2021 and March 2023.

Only one was eventually published, after a two-year review process. The other two were not accepted due to technical reasons.

What shocked him was discovering similar content in the IEEE Transactions on Computing Social Systems, where his student appeared as co-author with “seven other prolific paper mill authors.”

According to the petition, four authors were from India, including his student, one from the US, two from Iraq, and one from Saudi Arabia.

“The research was entirely conceptualized, defined, and designed by me, with methodologies, algorithms, figures, and results as my intellectual contributions. My student implemented the work, generated results, and prepared initial drafts under my daily guidance and review. None of this work was in the public domain nor accessible to any third party. At no point were there any other authors or collaborators,” Prof Kumar said in his petition.

His court filing includes screenshots of emails and WhatsApp messages in which three co-authors, including his student, admitted to misconduct.

It also contains correspondence with the IEEE editor, where some of the authors requested withdrawal of their names and retraction of the paper.

One screenshot shows a message from an editor assuring a co-author that the paper would indeed be withdrawn.

Yet, as Prof Kumar pointed out to the court, the article still remains unretracted. He has asked the court to appoint a technical expert committee to probe the alleged misappropriation.

The controversy arrives at a time when the shadowy operations of paper mills are under global scrutiny. Institutions worldwide are chasing rankings and accreditations that increasingly reward research output.

In India, the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) allocates 12–25% weightage to research, innovation, and extension, while the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) gives 15–30% weightage to research and professional practice.

International rankings such as Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) also assign 25% weightage to research, based on citations and collaborative networks.

This constant pressure to publish, say critics, has fueled demand for paper mills that provide fabricated or recycled research manuscripts for a fee, sometimes even selling authorship slots without genuine contribution.

A 2022 study by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers (STM) found that between 2% and 46% of papers submitted to journals across disciplines showed signs of being manufactured.

In 2023, United2Act was launched by COPE and STM, bringing together participants from 15 countries to coordinate a response to this “real threat to the integrity of the scholarly record.”

The underground market has been growing in India too. Agencies openly advertise services promising manuscript preparation, guaranteed publication, and even citation boosting.

In one case, an agency from Tamil Nadu offered authorship slots in Scopus-indexed papers at prices between ₹5,500 and ₹6,500, depending on author order.

Another agency reached out to a PhD scholar in Delhi through WhatsApp, listing services like manuscript writing for ₹20,000, publication for ₹7,000, printed copies for ₹24,000, and courier charges for ₹2,600, with a discounted package price of ₹31,600.

Citation boosts were available as well: 100 Google Scholar self-citations for ₹1,500, national author citations for ₹2,000, international citations for ₹3,000, and Web of Science citations ranging from ₹3,000 to ₹6,000.

Other agencies quoted even higher sums. One demanded ₹84,250 for a package that included topic suggestion, literature review, PRISMA-based research, article writing, and submission.

Another offered a similar package for ₹57,000. Both allowed EMI payments and promised refunds of up to 50% if publication failed, while dangling the assurance of acceptance letters to help candidates with job or PhD applications.

Experts warn that such practices are eroding academic credibility. Prof Yusuf Akhter of Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Lucknow, and Editor-in-Chief of Archives of Microbiology under Springer Nature, explained that paper mills often operate across borders, which makes regulation difficult.

“A paper mill in India may submit a paper to a journal based abroad, or vice versa. Regulations are weak and vary from country to country, and publishers seem to only be able to investigate after publication with the internal research ethics teams, which is why you sometimes see retractions even in credible publishing houses,” he said.

Prof Akhter also linked the rise of such agencies to structural issues.

“These entities seem to exploit young researchers. They recycle or fabricate data but present it in polished manuscripts that are hard to detect. As an editor, I do primary screening, but with the volume of submissions, it is very challenging to catch everything,” he noted.

Many scholars, he added, turn to paper mills to gain an edge in the job market, where publications often determine eligibility for teaching or research posts.

Not all external assistance, however, is unethical. Prof Akhter clarified that legitimate consultancies can help non-native speakers or early-career scholars with editing, language, and presentation support.

But, he warned, “If there is manipulation, data fudging, sale of authorships, no real contribution from the author, or plagiarism, which directly challenges the integrity of research, that is what paper mills and predatory journals engage in, and it is unethical.”

Prof BR Natarajan of Banasthali University, formerly Dean at BITS Pilani, said the emphasis on quantity of research for promotions and accreditations has trapped faculty in a cycle.

“Promotions and increments are tied to the number of papers published. If they publish, the institute benefits through rankings, and the professor gets rewarded. If not, they risk being branded unproductive, facing stalled promotions, and even losing goodwill,” he explained.

With faculty also weighed down by teaching, administration, and lab management, paper mills appear to many as a shortcut.

In his petition, Prof Kumar went further, urging the Delhi High Court to direct the Department of Higher Education, UGC, and AICTE to amend the 2018 UGC regulations on plagiarism.

He argued that existing rules do not adequately cover issues of authorship and supervision, allowing misconduct in the form of “Gift Supervision, Gift-and-Paid Authorship, Multi Affiliations, and Gift Discipline” to go unchecked.

His plea highlights that weak enforcement and outdated norms are leaving space for exploitation at the heart of academia.