Scientific publishers are waking up to the fact that fabricating and trading of academic papers is occurring on a massive scale in China. An official media outlet recently revealed how illegal paper mills operate to get fake manuscripts published, including in top international journals. In China, a hard-core metric of publishing academic papers is required for one to get promoted in a certain profession or academic field; but for many people this indicator is almost out of reach. Thus, a gray industry of scientific ghostwriters offering a “one-stop service” whereby submission and publication are done in the name of the client has evolved. By typing in keywords on Chinese search engines, you can easily find a large number of essay factories. A reporter from Xinhua Viewpoint, a column of official media Xinhua, posing as a cardiovascular and cerebrovascular physician contacted diverse paper factories and was told that all levels of …