方舟子的Blog

Ding Jie

2010年2月15日SciDev.net

一位研究人员发现，研究人员和教师渴望在中国“不发表论文就消失”的体系中成功，使得该国的论文交易增长了五倍。

2009年，中国的研究人员为发表论文——由他人捉刀的材料或非法学术刊物——支付了10亿元人民币（约合1.46亿美元），比2007年增加了五倍。

该消息来自于武汉大学信息管理学院副教授沈阳，他在今年一月向媒体披露了论文交易情况。

沈阳将中国的论文发表过程称为“一个庞大而完整的产业链”。

他提出了中国论文发表中存在的五个可疑之处：收取高昂的版面费取代同行评议制度，作者们要为在期刊上发表论文支付成百上千元；创办非法期刊；论文代写；代发论文，即作者付钱给中介机构，委托他们将自己的文章发表在期刊上；非法论文荣誉。

沈阳认为，这种交易之所以产生，在很大程度上是因为中国的大学和研究机构将发表论文作为衡量表现、晋升以及毕业的指标。例如，很多院所规定，如果在毕业之前不发表论文，博士生就不能获得学位。

因此，这促成了研究人员和学者——特别是在较弱的大学或学术机构——剽窃或购买文章。

根据沈阳的数据，中国有近9500份学术刊物，每年能发表大约250万篇文章。但中国却有3000万教授、教师、学生、技术员和研究者需要发表论文。

沈阳说，这种短缺催生了许多非法期刊，这种期刊通常比正规的期刊要大，却用较小的字体包含尽可能多的文章。

在中国一直与学术造假斗争的批评家方舟子告诉本网站，中国目前的学术体系使研究人员的欺诈成为一门有利可图的生意。

方解释说，地方政府增加了对研究机构的投资，因此，对于有经济动机的研究者来说更加有利可图。加上发表论文的压力、缺乏有效的监督和惩罚体系，催生了论文欺诈行为。

他还认为，中国的学术监督机构对欺诈行为视而不见。

沈阳呼吁给教师、研究人员和学生减轻发表论文的负担。他还建议建立网上发表机制，这样“既可大幅度降低学者发表费用和各单位的论文库购买费用，还便于大范围专家学者评议论文”。

Science paper trade booms in China

Ding Jie

15 February 2010 SciDev.Net

[BEIJING] Researchers and lecturers desperate to succeed in China’s ‘publish or perish’ system have driven a five-fold increase in the country’s scientific ‘paper trade’, a researcher has found.

The business of scientists paying for publication — sometimes of ghostwritten material or publication in illegal journals — was worth one billion Chinese yuan (around US$146 million) in 2009, five times larger than in 2007.

This was according to Shen Yang, a management studies researcher at Wuhan University, who released his assessment of the trade to the media last month (January).

Shen described China’s publishing process as “a massive and integrated production chain” in his research.

He defined five questionable paper-publishing practices in China: charging exorbitant publication fees, where instead of a peer review systems authors pay hundreds or thousands of yuan for publication in a journal; the establishment of illegitimate journals; ghostwriting of papers; paper brokering, where authors pay agencies to get their papers published in particular journals; and the fabrication of awards by illegitimate journals.

This trade is a product of the way Chinese universities and research institutions use rates of publication as a measure of performance and eligibility for promotion or graduation, wrote Shen. Many institutions, for example, stipulate that doctoral candidates cannot gain their PhD unless they have published one paper before graduation.

As a result, researchers and academics — particularly those in lesser universities or institutes — plagiarise or buy papers.

China has almost 9,500 academic publications that generate about 2.5 million papers per year, according to Shen’s figures. But there are 30 million teachers, lecturers, students, technicians and researchers seeking publication.

This shortfall has spawned many illegitimate journals, wrote Shen, which are usually larger than recognised journals but use a smaller font size to contain as many papers as possible.

Fang Zhouzi, a critic who has been fighting academic fraud in China for years, told SciDev.Net that the country’s current academic system makes researchers’ fraud a profitable business.

Local governments are increasingly funding research, so there is more money available for economically-motivated researchers. And the pressure to publish, coupled with a lack of effective monitoring and penalty systems, has lead to the proliferation of fraudulent behavior, Fang explained.

Fang is also concerned that Chinese academic supervisory organisations, such as the authority that provides publication licenses, turn a blind eye to fraud.

Shen called for an end to the paper publishing burden on teachers, researchers and students. He also suggested the development of online publications to reduce printing costs.