Friends: The Scholarly Kitchen blog has a guest post by Anna Abalkina describing some unethical practices perpetrated by Russian journals and Russian academics. They include plagiarizing work from other scholars by translating it and publishing it as their own, publishing articles in "predatory" journals and selling/buying credit as a second, third, or more author of a legitimate article. Payments for publication by Russian Universities (which may be reimbursed by the state) are contributing to the problem.
(Margaret comments) the price for becoming a fraudulent "co-author" is likely to be considerably lower than the typical APC (Article Processing Charge) that legitimate journals charge their authors for publication. In this case, misbehavior is a bargain all round..
Guest Post — Unethical Practices in Research and Publishing: Evidence from Russia
"Prices for “co-authorship” range from $1,300 to $6,200 per article, the cost of which is divided among the co-authors. Despite the high cost of having one’s name listed dishonestly as a co-author, fraudulent authors may come out ahead due to the financial bonuses offered by universities for publishing an article in one of the journals indexed in Scopus and Web of Science. Some universities have an interest in boosting (or at least turning a blind eye to) such behavior by their own faculty, because more publications can be converted into higher budget allocations. This situation has created a peculiar business model: paper mills and predatory journals receive a fee paid by a scholar who will be compensated by a financial bonus from their university, which in turn can rely on receiving higher budget transfers."
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