Authors : David Nicholas, Eti Herman, John Akeroyd, Abdullah Abrizah, Marzena Swigon, Jorge Revez, Blanca Rodríguez-Bravo, Tatyana Polezhaeva
On the back of countless warnings that the scholarly system is seriously being threatened, indeed, upended by fraud, fakery and numerous bad practices, we set out to establish the extent to which this is true by asking the people who are, arguably, in the best position to know—early career researchers (ECRs).
This is because they are research workhorses operating very much at the frontline of research; there are around a million of them and they represent the future. To this end, a convenience sample of 62 international ECRs from several disciplines were depth-interviewed about bad and questionable practices and such like.
An extensive literature review was also conducted to provide a broader context for and an expansion of the interview data. It was found that the system is not totally broken, but breaking it certainly is. It is under pressure and changes, such as whitelists, local journals and national boards/policies, are all slow to come about while the fakers can work very quickly.
