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University of Florida (UF) launched an investigation after an internal report detailed a culture of fear among faculty members claiming political influence on campus as well as instances of pressure to destroy and delay publication of COVID-19 research data. The report was the result of a three-week investigation into academic freedom at UF after three full-time professors were prevented from testifying as paid experts in a lawsuit brought against the state over voting rights.

A recent study warns policy-makers in developing countries about the poor quality of research evaluation. The findings show the infiltration of journals suspected of predatory practices into the citation database Scopus. 324 journals that appear both in Beall’s lists and on Scopus and 164,000 articles published from 2015-17 were identified. As a result, the Scopus Content Selection and Advisory Board removed underperforming journals.

A significant number of faculty members are being accused of securing their academic promotions through predatory publications and other sub-standard means. To combat this unethical practice, the Ethiopian Ministry of Science and Higher Education (MoSHE) issued a new Harmonised Standard for Academic Staff Promotion in Public Universities in October 2020. The MoSHE says the safest way to avoid predatory publications is for academics to submit manuscripts to peer-reviewed journals indexed by databases such as Scopus, Web of Science and PubMed.

Unethical practices leading to ‘pay and publish trash’ culture is a growing problem in India. One of the research papers authored by two of the university’s professors and a research scholar was retracted due to concerns about the validity of results. According to the University Grants Commission (UGC), the percentage of research articles published in predatory journals is high. So, in order to “identify, continuously monitor and maintain UGC-CARE Reference List of Quality Journals across disciplines” a Consortium of Academic and Research Ethics was launched.

The Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science, and Technology (CREST) at Stellenbosch University conducted a study on the quality of South Africa’s research publications, which includes predatory publishing. 4,246 South African papers published in 48 journals were found to be predatory. Several studies suggest that some academics are falling into predatory publication traps due to the pressure to publish, get more grants and boost their academic reputation.

Given that scientists are judged in large part by the number of peer-reviewed papers they produce, it’s easy to understand the temptation to engage in salami publication. It’s officially discouraged, but it’s still very common to see researchers writing perhaps 3 or 4 papers based on a single project that could, realistically, have been one big paper. In an extreme case of salami slicing, the journal Archives of Iranian Medicine published a set of 33 papers about one study.

Before each school year, the Ministry of Education publishes a list of approved textbooks, from which teachers will choose the ones they will use in class. For the 2017-2018 school year, the list is 30 pages long. There is big money in school books, explains a publisher who wants to remain anonymous. "Getting on the list is the Holy Grail, and no holds are barred. Imagine a little, it's a huge market, more than 5 million students! Everyone wants their share of the pie: authors, publishers, printers or distributors, even if the methods they use are not always legal.”