Academics pay journals to publish ghost-written articles to get promotions - Global Times

"Scandals involving plagiarism and publication ethics have been plaguing Chinese academia for a long time. A recent expose by Plagiarism Watch, a US-based website that monitors academic plagiarism, is the latest to further reveal the murky side of the Chinese academic world....All these journals are open-access journals, which means they are either financed by an institution or by article processing charges paid by submitting authors. On average, these journals charge between $1,350 to $2,250 to publish an article. Cheng Weihong, a reviewer at the Crop Journal published by the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, once attempted to calculate the total article processing charges paid by Chinese researchers to open access journals in 2015. He arrived at the staggering figure of $72.17 million, or 470 million yuan...."