Growing Trend of Fraud in Scientific Research, Pakistan is Second after Saudi Arabia

According to the International Directory of Open Science Journals, more than 9 million scientific papers were published in the year 2023. Statistics show that the global scholarly journal publishing market is set to grow by $1.95 billion in 2023. It is expected that by 2027, this amount will reach to 3.1 billion dollars.

Developed countries allocate special funds for scientific research in their annual budget, due to which scientific research has accelerated in recent years. But at the same time, cases of fraud in the publication of science papers are also increasing.

In December 2023, Nature Science published a list of countries whose research was removed after publication. According to this list, in 2023, more than 10,000 scientific papers were excluded after they were published, in which Saudi Arabia was the first and Pakistani researchers were the second which is a worrying situation.

Dr. Nair Alam, a senior researcher and geologist, said that publishing scientific papers is very important for students and scientists. Many international universities and research institutes have a certain number of published papers as part of the criteria for student admission and the advancement of scientists. There is a lack of international-level research in Pakistani universities. On the one hand, the Higher Education Commission does not have much budget to sponsor research, and other laboratories also lack modern equipment and facilities.

According to him, a third major reason is the lack of science writing skills in the English language. Students are not given any special training in writing scientific papers in universities. So they resort to sources like fake research or paper mills. These papers are subsequently de-published and are damaging Pakistan’s image internationally.