hotblack
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
How a Questionable Research Network Manipulated Scholarly Publishing
Leslie D. McIntosh, Hélène Draux, Elizabeth Smee, Cynthia Hudson Vitale
OBJECTIVE
To understand the broad impact of one questionable network on publishing, including the publishers, countries, and institutions involved and affected by the network’s activity.
DESIGN
We examined the Pharmakon Neuroscience Research Network (PNN), a questionable entity listed in funding statements, acknowledgments, and author affiliations in articles published between 2019 and 2023. We selected the PNN because it was the first potential broad-scale case of scientific manipulation identified by one of the authors (L.D.M), and analyzing the PNN has helped the development of patterns to discover other unusual collaboration networks. All documents containing “Pharmakon Neuroscience” anywhere in the title, abstract, author affiliations, and full text were selected using Dimensions.1 We excluded retraction and correction notices; articles for which a peer reviewer identified their organization as PNN; and articles with more than 25 authors. We inspected the metadata associated with the articles, notably the organizations related to the articles. We situated these practices within the Taxonomy of Scientific Manipulation,2 systematically identifying (1) who was involved (authors, institutions, and publishers), (2) where mechanisms were used to manipulate science (journals, countries, and institutions), and (3) how the science was manipulated (methods for deceiving scholarly communication).
RESULTS
Pharmakon Neuroscience was referenced in 140 published articles as of January 2025. After applying exclusion criteria, 123 articles remained. These articles included more than 6000 citations (citation ratio of 51 citations per article). The articles had 361 unique authors, including 29 without author identifiers (eg, ORCiD, Dimensions). The PNN involved 56 journals across 12 publishers, with Springer Nature (n = 29), Elsevier (n = 26), and Bentham Science Publishers (n = 25) having the most articles involved out of the total (n = 123). The involved authors were affiliated with 40 countries and 232 organizations. Of these organizations, 212 had research identifiers (eg, Research Organization Registry, Global Research Identifier Database), and 20 did not. Three of the organizations appeared to be personal homes, even though they were claimed as businesses or educational institutions. Additionally, one publication3 highlighted the PNN as an affiliation among the “top 25 most predictive and impactful authors.”
CONCLUSIONS
This investigation leveraged publication databases and advanced forensic scientometric techniques to highlight critical research integrity and security vulnerabilities in a questionable research network. We use the term “questionable network” because this co-authorship network appears to have grown too rapidly to have developed naturally from scholarly affiliations over time. The impact of the PNN’s work might be legitimized through future studies and become seen as normative behavior. Although the most prolific PNN author and organization stem from one country, there is a global impact not confined to high- or low-income countries. While one individual appears central to the network, a single orchestrator does not imply sole responsibility. Instead, this case underscores the complexity of manipulating the scientific ecosystem, where questionable actors exploit the scholarly communication system through nonverifiable funders and organizations and artificially inflated citation metrics.
Link (International Congress on Peer Review and Scientific Publication)
Leslie D. McIntosh, Hélène Draux, Elizabeth Smee, Cynthia Hudson Vitale
OBJECTIVE
To understand the broad impact of one questionable network on publishing, including the publishers, countries, and institutions involved and affected by the network’s activity.
DESIGN
We examined the Pharmakon Neuroscience Research Network (PNN), a questionable entity listed in funding statements, acknowledgments, and author affiliations in articles published between 2019 and 2023. We selected the PNN because it was the first potential broad-scale case of scientific manipulation identified by one of the authors (L.D.M), and analyzing the PNN has helped the development of patterns to discover other unusual collaboration networks. All documents containing “Pharmakon Neuroscience” anywhere in the title, abstract, author affiliations, and full text were selected using Dimensions.1 We excluded retraction and correction notices; articles for which a peer reviewer identified their organization as PNN; and articles with more than 25 authors. We inspected the metadata associated with the articles, notably the organizations related to the articles. We situated these practices within the Taxonomy of Scientific Manipulation,2 systematically identifying (1) who was involved (authors, institutions, and publishers), (2) where mechanisms were used to manipulate science (journals, countries, and institutions), and (3) how the science was manipulated (methods for deceiving scholarly communication).
RESULTS
Pharmakon Neuroscience was referenced in 140 published articles as of January 2025. After applying exclusion criteria, 123 articles remained. These articles included more than 6000 citations (citation ratio of 51 citations per article). The articles had 361 unique authors, including 29 without author identifiers (eg, ORCiD, Dimensions). The PNN involved 56 journals across 12 publishers, with Springer Nature (n = 29), Elsevier (n = 26), and Bentham Science Publishers (n = 25) having the most articles involved out of the total (n = 123). The involved authors were affiliated with 40 countries and 232 organizations. Of these organizations, 212 had research identifiers (eg, Research Organization Registry, Global Research Identifier Database), and 20 did not. Three of the organizations appeared to be personal homes, even though they were claimed as businesses or educational institutions. Additionally, one publication3 highlighted the PNN as an affiliation among the “top 25 most predictive and impactful authors.”
CONCLUSIONS
This investigation leveraged publication databases and advanced forensic scientometric techniques to highlight critical research integrity and security vulnerabilities in a questionable research network. We use the term “questionable network” because this co-authorship network appears to have grown too rapidly to have developed naturally from scholarly affiliations over time. The impact of the PNN’s work might be legitimized through future studies and become seen as normative behavior. Although the most prolific PNN author and organization stem from one country, there is a global impact not confined to high- or low-income countries. While one individual appears central to the network, a single orchestrator does not imply sole responsibility. Instead, this case underscores the complexity of manipulating the scientific ecosystem, where questionable actors exploit the scholarly communication system through nonverifiable funders and organizations and artificially inflated citation metrics.
Link (International Congress on Peer Review and Scientific Publication)
