Review mills identified as a new form of peer-review fraud

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Dozens of seemingly templated review reports show evidence of coercive citation

A ‘review mill’ that appears to have produced at least 85 similar peer-review reports featuring coercive citation could be an indicator of a new organised form of academic malpractice. The review reports were discovered alongside articles published across several journals run by the open-access publisher, MDPI, and were brought to light by a volunteer-led investigation posted online by Predatory Reports – an organisation that aims to highlight unethical publishing practices.