One of the most highly cited authors in engineering has continued publishing after his death more than a year ago. 

Jiří Jaromír Klemeš, a researcher at the Brno University of Technology in the Czech Republic and a top editor at an Elsevier journal that has come under fire for author self-citation, is listed as a coauthor of at least 49 papers published since his death in January 2023. 

Most of the articles do not mention that Klemeš is deceased. Whether they should have is not entirely clear. Publishers and journals aren’t consistent about the protocol following the death of a research collaborator –  a lack of consistency that has even stirred up some debate among our own readers in the past. 

Of the 49 papers we found posthumously listing Klemeš as a coauthor, 27 fail to mention his death. Commenters on PubPeer have spotted several of these instances and queried them without a meaningful response from the surviving authors. 

One commenter pointed out that a paper Klemeš revised and published in June 2023 had a note acknowledging all authors had read and agreed to the contents of the published manuscript. “The current statement is factually incorrect for obvious reasons,” the commenter wrote. (The paper was submitted in May 2023, months after Klemeš’ death, but it is possible it had been completed before he died and submitted elsewhere first, or that it simply wasn’t submitted to the journal that published it for some months.)

While it’s not clear how common deceased authorship is in the wider scientific community, one study looking at the biomedical field found the phenomenon has been on the rise since the year 2000.

The reasons behind this “burgeoning trend” are unclear, according to the study. While surviving authors may often want to acknowledge a deceased colleague’s contributions, giving authorship to a dead researcher could have ulterior motives, such as boosting a paper’s chances of getting published. 

The vast majority of Klemeš’ posthumous papers are in titles published by Elsevier, including the two journals with the highest number of publications that did not cite the researcher’s death: Energy and the Journal of Cleaner Production.

In response to our queries to Energy, a spokesperson from Elsevier wrote that the publisher does not have a policy for acknowledging the death of a coauthor. Klemeš confirmed coauthorship for eight of the 14 publications in Energy, according to the spokesperson. For the six that were submitted after his death, two confirmed his coauthorship in the acknowledgements and one was confirmed by a statement from another author. 

“We are in the process of obtaining statements of co-authorship for the remaining 3 papers,” the email continued. 

An editor at the Journal of Cleaner Production said they would carefully check all the papers about which we inquired. 

Until his death, Klemeš was a subject editor at Energy and a co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Cleaner Production. As we’ve reported previously, the Journal of Cleaner Production was mentioned in an expression of concern from Clarivate, a journal-indexing service, for a disproportionately high number of self-citations – adding up to more than 11,000 out of 47,000, or about a quarter, of the documented references. 

Petar Sabev Varbanov, a frequent collaborator of Klemeš and a co-author or editor of 17 of the posthumous publications, did not respond to a request for comment.

Klemeš, who was the head of the research center Sustainable Process Integration Laboratory (SPIL), was regularly included in “highly cited” leaderboards, earning the title from Clarivate in 2020, 2022 and 2023. In previous years, he also was listed as a top reviewer and handling editor. Speaking at a conference in Malaysia in 2016, he joked that he reviewed 16 papers in the lunch break alone.  

A decade ago, we wrote about a researcher who appeared to have submitted revisions to a manuscript after his death. Back then, the journal argued that since he contributed to the manuscript, his name should be kept as an author. 

Among Klemeš’ posthumous papers, the ones that did explicitly flag his death either included a note in the acknowledgments dedicating the paper to his memory or a dagger symbol (†) next to his name. 

According to the journals’ authorship guidelines, such acknowledgment doesn’t seem to be necessary most of the time. Elsevier does not have explicit instructions about deceased authors, but broadly notes authorship “should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution or interpretation of the reported study.”

Springer Nature, also among the publishers of Klemeš’ posthumous papers, says coauthors should obtain approval from a representative to include the deceased author. The American Chemical Society, another one of the publishers, states the deceased person should be included with a note indicating the date of death – a directive followed by one of the two papers published by the society.

There’s no clear consensus either among the nonprofit organizations that help shape best practices in scholarly publishing. 

The authorship criteria recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors say authors should give “final approval of the version to be published” – potentially an impossible task for a deceased author, depending on the timing of the publication and the person’s death. The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), on the other hand, has given case-by-case advice. In one instance, the group recommended adding a footnote about the death and the author’s contribution. In another, it recommended connecting with a surviving partner or the person’s estate to accept the proof.

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New findings from a survey of psychology researchers show nearly half of the respondents have encountered unethical authorship practices in studies they have been involved in.

Researchers in Belgium surveyed more than 800 people involved in psychological research about their experiences with gift and ghost authorship, as well as the use of explicit authorship guidelines at their institutions. 

Almost half said they had witnessed gift authorship on more than one occasion – in other words, the respondents saw someone listed as an author when they had made little or no contribution to a paper. Ghost authorship –  excluding someone from a paper when they have made a significant contribution – was far less common, with fewer than one in five of the respondents reporting that they had dealt with the phenomenon. Since the authors used a convenience sample, the data show signs of authorship misconduct in psychology, but don’t tell the whole story. 

Gert Storms, a professor of psychology and educational sciences at KU Leuven, and an author of the paper, which was posted to the OSF Preprints server on December 11, says the science community pays little attention to inappropriate authorship compared with other misconduct, and the questionable practice goes largely unchecked. 

Storms says the manuscript of the survey’s results has been desk rejected three times. One editor cited concerns about informed consent. For that reason, the authors decided not to share the data openly, they said. 

“These findings should be known,” Storms says. “I’m not concerned about getting it published in a way that gives me ‘a new publication with my name on it’. At my age, I just don’t care for that. It is the message.” 

Storms himself has witnessed several instances of undeserving bylines. Early in his career, somebody was given a byline on a paper Storms published even though they had made no contribution to the paper apart from applying for grant money. 

While the survey did not ask respondents why they believed the authorship misconduct occurred, Storms says the practice is advantageous for the perpetrators. “It will affect research to a large extent because it determines how much research money and grants people get, who gets hired, who is kicked out of the race and so on,” he says. 

Gift authorship in particular helps researchers accumulate publications to their name – crucial to academic recognition for those pressured by the ‘publish or perish’ culture in academia. 

“When I see CVs where people have one paper every eight or nine days, what should one think about this?” Storms says.  “Who has an idea that is worth putting on paper, and who contributes substantially to things that can be published every eight or nine days? That is simply impossible.” 

Other research on questionable authorship practices indicates a much higher prevalence of gift and ghost authorship in the biomedical field compared with psychology. One study of biomedical researchers reported 75% of respondents had experienced the addition of an undeserving author to a paper they had worked on. The same survey found that more than 30% of respondents had encountered a ghost author – a practice that may be more frequent in a field with regular industry collaboration, Storms says. In some fields, “it’s simply better for the credibility of the findings that [some authors] are not mentioned,” he says. 

Authorship criteria vary between institutions. The American Psychological Association’s authorship standards state that “substantial scientific contributions” warrant authorship of a paper; the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) guidelines, which are widely adopted by scientific journals, recommend authors should also draft or revise the work, in addition to having contributed substantially to the paper, among other criteria. 

“Defining what is a substantial contribution can lead to debate,” says Steven De Peuter, a staff member of the Research Coordination Office at KU Leuven and an author of the paper. A recent study has shown researchers often don’t agree with what is enough of a contribution to deserve authorship. 

In the new survey, each respondent was asked a series of questions about a paper they had recently published. When authorship guidelines – such as those developed by the APA or ICMJE – were not used to decide who should be an author on the paper, respondents were more likely to think that the decision was unfair. Likewise, if the respondents’ research setting did not encourage any authorship guidelines, they were more likely to believe the final authorship decisions weren’t a fair reflection of contribution. 

“I think the main point is that people need to be willing to discuss what the criteria are,” De Peuter says. “That also helps incredibly to establish an atmosphere of fairness and openness.” He also notes that authorship disputes often are a symptom of a pre-existing conflict. 

Guidelines that require writing for authorship tend to exclude members of the research group  with less tangible roles. For example, under ICMJE guidelines, “if I’m just a brilliant engineer who figured out how to get my machine to do the new trick, that doesn’t necessarily qualify me for authorship,” says Alex Holcombe, a professor of psychology at the University of Sydney and expert in authorship issues. “We’re stuck in a system that is not set up for indicating who did what.” 

Contributorship – a system that categorizes each person’s contributions to a paper – is a more transparent approach, Holcombe argues. He backs the classification system CRediT, or the Contributor Roles Taxonomy, which includes roles such as software and visualization, as well as the more traditional roles of writing,conceptualization and funding acquisition. Thousands of journals have already adopted the system, but it exists alongside the traditional system of authorship and is not yet routine across the research landscape. 

Authorship misconduct has been relatively overlooked compared with other types of research misconduct, Storms says. In the 1980s, William Bevan, then president of the American Psychological Association, said decisions about authorship, like those about sex, should “have a degree of intimacy about them.” 

“I have the impression that the same attitude is still present in psychology,” Storms says. “And that’s really a shame.”

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On March 12, a senior administrator at a university in India sent a business proposal to a prolific economist in Ethiopia. If he joined the school’s stable of adjunct professors, the administrator promised, easy money could be made. 

All the economist had to do was “add our affiliation for incentives in your papers,” explained Lakshmi Thangavelu, dean of international affairs at Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical Sciences (SIMATS), in Chennai, in a written exchange.

“Surely I will do that. Not a big deal,” replied Mohd Asif Shah, an associate professor at Kebri Dehar University, in eastern Ethiopia.

But the deal turned sour. Although Shah listed SIMATS as an affiliation on at least two research papers he published this fall, in December he still hadn’t received any payments from the school, he complained. Then he turned to LinkedIn to share his frustration in a post that included screenshots of his conversation with Thangavelu, who is also a professor at Saveetha Dental College, part of SIMATS.

“Hello Guys,” Shah began, “I am here today exposing one of the biggest scams done by a few higher educational institutions in India.”

According to the post, which has now been deleted, Thangavelu:

contacts professors across the globe for working as an adjunct faculty for her institution and asks them to publish the research papers for her institution by using the affiliation.

In exchange for this she is promising money by mentioning incentives.

This is all done to get good national and international rankings.

SIMATS’ dental school, which advertises itself as the world’s most published institution of its kind, has a track record for manipulating publication metrics. A Retraction Watch investigation published earlier this year in Science found Saveetha Dental College had soared to the top of India’s national rankings thanks in part to a massive self-citation scheme involving thousands of student papers.

Paying researchers to be added on publications from other institutions may be yet another way the school is gaming the system to get ahead in the rankings. While the extent of the scheme is not clear, according to a status report from 2021:

The institution encourages students and faculties to publish their work in high-impact factor journals by providing incentives. The institution has spent Rs. 4.8 crores [about US$ 584.000] as publication incentives. 

The tactic is not unique to SIMATS. In 2011, Science described how Saudi universities offered tens of thousands of dollars to highly cited researchers overseas to boost their academic standing. Although European institutions have recently pushed back against this practice, scientists in other parts of the world may face less scrutiny and still be attractive targets for universities hungry for publications.

Neither Thangavelu nor SIMATS’ chancellor replied to requests for comment. Shah told us by email:

I wanted to bring to your attention that the LinkedIn post/message was inadvertently shared in a public group, it was a private message. I would like to clarify that I do not endorse the content of the statement and do not consent to the use of my message for any publication in any form.

With Shah onboard, SIMATS would have had access to a very productive author. In 2023 alone, Shah published more than 100 research papers on everything from the fabrication of graphene-based nanocoatings to predatory arthropods in rice fields and the sensory profile of spiced yogurt. 

According to his ORCID profile, Shah is trained in economics and is an adjunct professor at 10 different universities in Afghanistan, India, Malaysia and Iran, in addition to his position at Kebri Dehar University. SIMATS is not among those institutions because, as Shah wrote on LinkedIn, “as you publish the research papers, you are not paid.”

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Researchers apparently don’t need to be real to publish in scientific journals. 

Take Nicholas Zafetti of Clemson University, in South Carolina, who has at least nine publications to his name. Or Giorgos Jimenez of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with 12 papers under his belt.

Both identities seem to be bogus, according to Alexander Magazinov, a scientific sleuth and software engineer based in Kazakhstan. They add to a short but growing list of ostensibly fictitious researchers who appear as coauthors on real papers. 

We’ve written about Beatriz Ychussie of Roskilde University, in Denmark, whose work was marred by plagiarism and faked peer review; Dragan Rodriguez of Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland, whose name adorned 15 articles on anything from cancer detection to “renewable energy systems optimization;” and Toshiyuki Bangi of Nanyang Technological University, in Singapore, who apparently was added to manuscripts by researchers looking to boost their “chances in the review process.” 

Neither Zafetti nor Jimenez responded to interview requests sent to the email addresses listed on their papers.

Magazinov spotted Zafetti, as he did Rodriguez, while investigating a potential citation ring linked to an Iranian paper mill. Intriguingly, Zafetti had published almost exclusively with Chinese researchers. And his papers – appearing in titles from Springer Nature, Elsevier and Taylor & Francis – included an unusually high number of references to work by Noradin Ghadimi, a researcher at Ankara Yildirim Beyazit University, in Turkey. (Ghadimi did not respond to a request for comment.)

In October, Magazinov contacted Clemson University to share his concerns. In an email to Tracy Arwood, associate vice president and chief ethics and compliance officer at the institution, he wrote:

This case is similar to several others, where fictional identities of US-based researchers were used in scientific publications. …

The similarities with the “Rodriguez” case include complete absence of domestic collaboration (the coauthors are mostly Chinese, with one exception: a single paper signed by Charalampos Baniotopoulos from Birmingham, UK), as well as an unexpected abundance of citations to one specific person, Noradin Ghadimi.

Arwood promised to investigate. On November 6, she circled back: 

We have completed our review. We are reaching out to the journal editors to share our findings and ask for any information they may have that is contrary to our findings. We will also ask that they take appropriate action if they agree with our findings.

Neither Arwood nor the university’s newsroom responded to our requests for comment. 

The three affected publishers all told us they were looking into the concerns about Zafetti. An Elsevier spokesperson added that the company was investigating authorship changes in two of Zafetti’s papers “that were not approved by the Editors.”.

We also reached out to two of Zafetti’s (seemingly real) coauthors, Ziyu Wang of the University of Birmingham, in the U.K., and Yongtang Wu of Weifang University of Science and Technology, in China, but did not hear back.

Magazinov shared with us three other apparently fake identities he had stumbled on during his sleuthing: a “Benjamin Badami” of the University of Georgia, in Athens, Georgia; an “Achla Anderson” of Texas Tech University, in Lubbock; and a “Scott Mizzi” of Northeastern University, in Boston. They all published exclusively with international coauthors, mainly from China, and none appeared on the websites of the institutions with which they were allegedly affiliated.

As to Jimenez, SAGE Publications publicly called the bluff last year. In a pair of retraction notices, the publisher stated:

Following publication of the article, the Journal became aware that the identity of one of the authors, G Jimenez, cannot be confirmed at their listed institution. The authors were asked for an explanation of the involvement of an unauthorised third party and did not provide a response.

But that didn’t stop Jimenez’ work from being published elsewhere. And most of “his” papers remain in print – in titles published by Springer Nature, Elsevier, De Gruyter and others – as do those of Zafetti, Badami, Anderson, Mizzi and Rodriguez.

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