A recent investigation reveals abnormal publication records of an author group from the Southwest University. TAN Qinyi (谭亲毅) is one of the core authors among this authorship network. Another key author is TENG Luyan.
A same ethical approval number (XMYY-2024KYSB090) in three articles [1, 2, 3] coauthored by YE Guanzhi (叶冠志) et. al., with The First Affiliated Hospital of Xiamen University. However, This ethical approval is questionable.
Our investigation reveals that Chinese authors are over represented in Advanced Materials family. In 2025, about 61% published in Advanced Materials have a Chinese first author. The number reaches 71.6% in Advanced Functional Materials.
An investigation by the 5GH Team found that China ranks among the top collaborating countries for U.S. universities.
Recently, an investigation by the 5GH Team has revealed that several companies in Nanchang are suspected of selling academic papers. These companies attract customers on RedNote (a.k.a. Xiaohongshu), a well-known Chinese social media platform, through advertisements for "journal recommendations" or by posing as past clients sharing their experiences. Ultimately, under the guise of professional technical services such as copyright transfer services, the companies provide ghostwriting services to clients, in suspected trading of academic papers.
An investigation conducted by the 5GH Team has revealed that two articles, contain 20 identical figures, all of which are reused from the Master's Thesis of LIU Wenbin, a former student at China University of Petroleum (East China).
Buying papers from paper mills is not an unfamiliar practice in academic community. Even if you and your colleagues have never done it, you have probably heard of such things. So how much does it actually cost to buy a paper from a paper mill? And how many days does it take to receive a finished manuscript?
Recently, the 5GH Team noticed that some users on RedNote (also known as Xiaohongshu), a popular Chinese social media platform, were looking for authors who had submitted manuscripts to academic journals and asking them to cite their clients' articles.
A recent investigation reveals that an author group from Liaoning Normal University with core authors of ZHU Xingchen (朱星辰) exhibits several salami-slicing publication practices.
Recently, the 5GH Team uncovered a network at Hainan University and other Chinese universities suspected of manipulating the peer review process.
when replying to an enquiry from the 5GH Team, the agency stated that the support mainly involves "分区倾斜" (i.e., a preferential adjustment of the journals’ ranking categories)
Nature communications articles with a Chinese first author published in 2025 received an average of 13.4 citations, ranking 1st among the nation published more than 20 articles in the journal
An article published on PLoS ONE appears to have been accepted without the evaluation of any external reviewer.
Recently, the 5GH Team received a tip-off alleging that Timothy Jeonglyeol LEE (李鼎烈) from the Macau University of Science and Technology may be exploiting his position as the Editor-in-Chief of "The International Journal of Tourism Research" (IJTR) to inflate his citations. Here are some more detailed data
A previous investigation [1] revealed that about 17.5% citations to DAI Shifeng (代世峰) in 2025 came from the "International Journal of Coal Geology" (IJCG), the journal for which he services as the Editor-in-Chief. However, our further investigation shows that the phenomenon was common over the last two decades.