Dr Reese Richardson's phone is basically a 24/7 paper mill notification service. The research integrity specialist has been tracking these shadowy operations that sell fraudulent authorship on scientific papers, and his inbox is a testament to their relentless marketing. "I can just look through my notifications and I can see that I've gotten, like, 20 WhatsApp messages from paper mills in the last 24 hours," he says, presumably while rolling his eyes.
For a fee, these mills will happily list you as an author on a scientific paper, often bypassing that pesky peer review process entirely. Scientists, under constant pressure to publish or perish, sometimes take the shortcut. The currency of academia is publications, and these mills are the counterfeiters.
Richardson, along with Anna Abalkina and Spencer Hong, analyzed over 18,000 advertisements from seven paper mills across seven countries between 2020 and 2026. Their findings, not yet peer reviewed (irony noted), show the median price for authorship is around US$800 (A$1,150). Some groups advertise on Telegram, Facebook, and websites for as little as US$30. That's a bargain for a fake publication.
Paper mill activity has exploded in the last 15 years, with products doubling approximately every 18 months, according to Richardson's 2025 estimate. The result is an industrial-scale injection of falsified data into the scientific ecosystem, compromising medical research, drug discovery, and clinical trials. In 2023 alone, Hindawi, a Wiley-owned journal brand, retracted more than 8,000 articles, with another 3,000 retractions by the end of 2024. Oops.
Richardson's research is like a forensic examination of these advertisements, which he likens to fingerprints at a crime scene. He's tracked some directly to fraudulent papers. But the mills don't stop at papers; they also sell copyrights and design registrations, which can provide legitimate intellectual property rights. In the UK, Richardson found thousands of such registrations. In his new work, he identified 12 instances where an Indian paper mill advertised "Australian design patents" to Indian academics.
The mills sell positions as "owners" of design registrations for between $95 and $150 per owner, allowing up to eight people to be listed on a single design. Meanwhile, a standard design registration application through IP Australia costs $200 in total. So, for a fraction of the cost, you can be an "owner" of a design you had nothing to do with. Guardian Australia found cases where these registrations were listed as patents on CVs. As Richardson puts it, "They're using the services of the Australian government to defraud others."
One example: an "AI based membrane bioreactor for treatment of wastewater" lists six owners, all traced to research institutes in India. None responded to requests for comment. Another, a "Smart humanoid robot for industrial applications," includes Dr Nilesh Torwane, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Queensland, as a design owner. Torwane told Guardian Australia he "did no design work on the product" but was invited to be named. He's now seeking to remove his name from the registration.
IP Australia, when contacted, said it wasn't aware of Richardson's paper but welcomed any information about misuse. They noted, "We have no data to suggest that there is widespread misuse of the Australian designs registration system in the manner suggested." Sure, no data, but let's not ask too many questions.
Prof Adrian Barnett, a metascience researcher at QUT, describes the mills as "shadowy organisations." They could be a "techie kid in their bedroom" or "larger organisations that even have morning teas and employees of the month." Who knows? But they're making a decent amount of money.
As Richardson's phone buzzes yet again with another advertisement, he admits, "We've still barely scratched the surface." At this rate, his phone might need a restraining order.