Page 22 - The lraternational Journal of the Royal Society of Thailand.indd

The International Journal of the Royal Society of Thailand
Volume XV-2023

paper mill services, especially in the contexts of other countries. Rather, our criteria
could be used as a screening method that could support further investigation of research
misconduct activities.

We acknowledge some technical limitations in our study. Firstly, we relied
on data from a single database, which could have led to the exclusion of certain

researchers. Secondly, our analysis depended on lexical matches of researchers’ names,
potentially introducing errors. This approach treated distinct researchers sharing
the same first and last names as identical individuals. Additionally, variations in the
spelling of researchers’ names were considered as separate individuals.

In conclusion, our co-authorship network analysis provides insights into

authorship profiles associated with authorship-for-sale activities, laying the
groundwork for further investigations into various types of misconduct. To effectively
combat systematic research misconduct, we propose the following future approaches:
1) Identifying and tracking researchers who belong to the same communities, classified
by network analysis algorithms, as researchers confirmed to have purchased their

authorships; 2) Incorporating machine learning algorithms on a larger sample size to
identify suspicious researchers more accurately; 3) Analyzing citation networks to gain
a deeper understanding of the patterns of citation rings, which are often associated

with paper mill activities; 4) Analyzing aggregated co-author networks of suspicious
researchers to identify the key individuals who facilitate paper mill activities within
academic communities.

Conclusion

Authorship-for-sale is a form of various research misconducts facilitated by
paper mill service platforms that poses negative impacts on academic communities.
Through intensive use of these services, distinct authorship profiles of such researchers

become evident through descriptive analysis. In the context of the academic community
in Thailand, we observed that suspicious researchers may accumulate a substantial
number of publications early in their careers. Additionally, a significant proportion of
their co-authors may be affiliated with regions where paper mill platforms operate.

Thoroughly investigating such suspicious researchers serves as an important initial
step in combating systemic research misconducts and improving integrity within
academic communities.

A Potential Use of Ego-centric Co-authorship Network Analysis for
14 Inspecting Research Misconduct: A Case Study of Thai Researchers