Chinese Paper Mill Stole the Identity of a Brazilian Researcher
The identify of a Brazilian researcher, Dr. Heinz D. Fill, is suspected to be stolen by a Chinese paper mill network. This concern was raised by an academic sleuth a few days ago.
Five problematic articles with fishy authorship were discovered. Dr Fill was listed as the last author in ALL of those 5 articles, and ALL of the other coauthors have Chinese names. Most of the Chinese authors came from Chinese universities and company, including Xi’an Peihua University (西安培华学院), Ningbo University of Finance and Economics (宁波财经学院), Guangzhou Maritime University (广州航海学院), Guangdong Jixin Guokong Testing and Certification Technology Service Center Co., Ltd. (广东集信国控检测认证技术服务中心股份有限公司). One exception is Zhaojun An, he was from University of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
In those 5 articles, Dr. Fill was listed with an e-mail address of hf18@cornell.edu, and he was claimed to be working at the "School of Computer Science" of the Cornell University. Although Prof. Stedinger, the supervisor of Fill's doctoral program, verified that this e-mail did belong to Fill, however, this does not mean that Fill did get involved in the paper mill matter. Firstly, since Fill got his doctoral degree at Cornell University, he should know there is no "School of Computer Science" at Cornell University. Secondly, the e-mail address which Fill uses most frequently is heinzfill@yahoo.com, such as in the article [1], instead of hf18@cornell.edu. Thirdly, Fill has been not very active during the last decades, the sudden raise of his publications since 2024 suggests that his identify was likely stolen by the paper mill.
The reasons why the paper mill stole Fill's identity remains unknown. A senior research being listed as a coauthor may help to get the articles be published. The paper mill might think stealing the identity of an nonactive researcher was less likely to be caught, because such nonactive researchers may have less attention to their publication records.
It is also unknown how many nonactive researchers are affected by such paper mills' operations. Academic sleuths in the globe are trying to figure out how many researchers have abnormal publication records: sudden increase of their publication numbers after decades of publication gap.
The 5GH Team is still waiting for Dr. Fill's reply about this matter.
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