Peer Review Rings: Manipulated Peer Reviews and Scams

Peer review is a cornerstone of academic publishing, ensuring the credibility and quality of scholarly work. In this chapter, we describe and discuss one of the fundamental acts of dishonesty in peer review: peer review rings and scams (e.g. Callaway 2015; Ferguson et al. 2014). We describe several instances and cases where this sort of nefarious practice has been detected and the fallout of such dishonest practices, while also laying out the foremost reasons underlying this problem. We urge editorial offices of journals and their editors to pay closer attention to this problem and to ensure stringent consequences (including blacklisting and enforcing bans) for erring author teams. If this issue is not corrected in a timely manner, then the very future of academia could be in jeopardy. We provide suggestions to help clamp down on potential peer review dishonesty by nefarious and bad-faith actors.