For decades, discussions of scientific misconduct have tended to focus on individuals’ misbehaviour tagged as the fraudulent researcher, the plagiarist, the data fabricator.
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Over the past few years, however, a growing body of empirical research has shifted the lens from individual psychology to systemic structure.
Scholars have begun to ask not only why certain scientists cheat, but how the institutional environments in which they work—the metrics that evaluate them, the funding competitions that sustain them, the commercial indexes that define their legitimacy—might be among the causes.
What the data show, at scale
The following studies employ a range of methods: systematic reviews of publication records, latent class analysis of researcher surveys, forensic examination of peer review reports, and historical comparison of fraud cases.
- Oviedo-García, Aquarius & Bishop (2026)
- Mills (2025)
- Paruzel-Czachura, Baran & Spendel (2021)
- van Dalen (2021)
- Hackett & Kelly (2020)
- Mills & Inouye (2020)
- Huistra & Paul (2020)
Across these approaches, a consistent pattern emerges.
Researchers report observing misconduct in colleagues at rates far exceeding their admission of personal wrongdoing—a perception gap that suggests systematic underreporting.
Publication pressure correlates with willingness to commit future misconduct, even when it does not predict past behavior.
And review mills, paper mills, and coercive citation networks have evolved from hypothetical risks to documented realities, with some networks comprising hundreds of coordinated actors.
While each study describes an individual, discrete problem, taken together, they point to a broader conclusion.
The erosion of research integrity is not primarily a failure of individual character. It is a feature of an academic economy that rewards volume over rigor, metrics over meaning, and speed over depth.
What follows is a summary of the evidence.
How do systemic pressures — publication metrics, grant competition, commercial indexing — shape researcher behaviour and perceptions of integrity?
Sources: Hackett & Kelly (2020) · Oviedo-García, Aquarius & Bishop (2026) · Mills & Inouye (2020) · Mills (2024) · Paruzel-Czachura, Baran & Spendel (2021) · Huistra & Paul (2020) · van Dalen (2021)
Since the early 2010s, scientific misconduct has evolved from isolated cases to organised commercial networks. Hackett and Kelly (2020) describe “paper mills” that produce and sell fabricated research papers. These operations exploit the pressure to publish, offering fake data, invented images, and even complete manuscripts. Detection remains difficult: while plagiarism software catches text duplication, image manipulation — spliced gels, duplicated bands, stock images reused across papers — often requires human sleuths. In 2019, Biology Open found pre‑publication integrity issues in 9% of accepted articles.
Oviedo-García, Aquarius and Bishop (2026) identified a network of 195 review reports across 170 articles, all sharing identical boilerplate language and coercive citation requests. Reviewers demanded authors cite specific PubMed IDs — almost always papers co‑authored by network members. 78% of requests were complied with. The result: articles passed peer review without receiving any genuine, substantive feedback.
Boilerplate prevalence
86% of target review reports contained boilerplate text, vs 2% in legitimate reviews.
Coercive citations
Review mill reports contained 1.99 citation requests per review (vs 0.07 in comparison reviews).
Mills and Inouye (2020) systematically reviewed 16 empirical studies and found that the term “predatory” obscures more than it reveals. Most scholars who publish in non‑mainstream journals do so knowingly, driven by institutional pressures: publication requirements for graduation, promotion points, and the difficulty of publishing in English‑language Western journals. In contexts like Colombia, Nigeria, and Iran, these journals play positive roles: training PhD students and disseminating local‑language knowledge.
Key finding: “Many academics knowingly turn to non‑mainstream journals to advance their careers, cognisant of the challenges they face.”
Mills (2024) traces how the Science Citation Index (1965) and its commercial successors — Web of Science and Scopus — have become the de facto arbiters of scientific legitimacy. The index was hardwired with Anglo‑American bias: 70% of journals indexed in 1963 were from the US or UK. Today, fewer than 4% of Sub‑Saharan African journals are indexed. Four corporations publish over 70% of social science journals, with profit margins around 40%.
Indexing disparity
~2,200 active journals in Sub‑Saharan Africa. Only 166 indexed in Web of Science.
Commercial concentration
Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley, T&F control >70% of social science journals.
Paruzel-Czachura, Baran and Spendel (2021) surveyed 423 Polish researchers and 31 managers. Only 3% admitted to past ethical violations, yet 51% observed misconduct in colleagues. The most common offence was honorary authorship. Perceived publication pressure did not correlate with past misconduct — but it did correlate with intention to commit future misconduct (r = .13, p < .05).
Huistra and Paul (2020) compare two fraud cases. In 1996 (Diekstra, plagiarism), 67% of explanations invoked personality traits — 0% structural. By 2011 (Stapel, fabrication), 64% of explanations cited systemic factors: publication pressure, grant competition, research culture. What changed? Between 1990 and 2017, Dutch research funding became hyper‑competitive, with acceptance rates collapsing from nearly 100% to ~30%.
1996: Diekstra
67% personal explanations
0% structural
2011: Stapel
64% structural explanations
83% systemic in general reflections
van Dalen (2021) surveyed Dutch economists (N=330). 66% are “skeptics” who see downsides: excessive unread papers, unethical behaviour, neglect of national issues. 34% are “supporters” who emphasise upward mobility. Full professors are disproportionately supportive (47% vs 31% of assistant professors). 40% of skeptics have considered leaving academia — versus 21% of supporters.
Unintended consequence: “The folly of rewarding A while hoping for B” — publication metrics are now the dominant currency, distorting science away from discovery and toward measurable output.
Research integrity is not primarily a matter of individual virtue. It is shaped by systemic pressures — the metric tide, hyper‑competition for grants, the gatekeeping power of commercial indexes, and the publish‑or‑perish career structure. Researchers see misconduct in colleagues far more than they admit in themselves. Spectacular fraud cases trigger systemic explanations only when a critique of the system is already in place. Those who benefit from the current system (full professors, high‑publishing insiders) are systematically more likely to defend it.
Alternatives?
Diamond open access (no fees for authors or readers), community‑owned infrastructures (SciELO, Redalyc), and DORA offer paths away from metric‑driven evaluation. Input control — selecting for a “taste for science” rather than rewarding publication volume — is a radical but plausible alternative.
