How the Chennai-based ARDA guarantees quick publication without peer-reviewing, sells authorship

“Your full paper, we can publish by August 15. If you complete the payment [of Rs.23,000] today [August 6, 2025], formatting will be completed tomorrow and sent for publication,” the Chennai-based Academic Research and Development Association (ARDA) person messaged on WhatsApp. Phew!

The Chennai-based Academic Research and Development Association (ARDA), which published around 84 “journals” as of March last year, can be called a paper mill or a predatory publisher but with a small difference — many of its journals are indexed on Scopus or Web of Science.

A paper published on August 4 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has detailed about the alarming growth of scientific fraud and made a special mention about the Chennai-based ARDA for the far higher rate of journals being deindexed by Scopus. In 2020, 33% (13 of 39) of ARDA journals were deindexed by Scopus, while the baseline rate was 0.5%. Of the 86 journals in March 2024, Reese A.K. Richardson a Postdoc from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois and the first author of the PNAS paper and others found that 17 journals were suspected to be “hijacked journals” — once legitimate journals that had been taken over by a paper mill, which has gained complete editorial control over the journal and its indexed content. The researchers also found that 34% to 98.7% of the papers published in ARDA journals were typically “outside of the journal’s stated scope”.

Despite thousands of predatory journal and paper mills spread across many countries, was Academic Research and Development Association (ARDA) picked up for special mention in the PNAS paper because Reese Richardson had already investigated it and written an article in Retraction Watch or was ARDA, even by the standards of a predatory journal/paper mill, way above the ordinary? “We knew from our previous investigation in Retraction Watch that ARDA was part of a wide-reaching organisation with involvement in many different facets of the market for academic fraud. Unlike other paper mills that we have identified previously, ARDA listed the journals that they operate in on their website. Since this website changes over time (we looked at web pages catalogued by the internet archive), ARDA presented a valuable opportunity to understand how paper mills and broker organisations function and evolve over time,” Reese Richardson said in an email. Retraction Watch had carried another article on ARDA in December 2023.

‘We conduct conferences, not publish journals’

I had emailed ARDA asking them pointed questions based on the PNAS paper and my interaction with an ARDA person on WhatsApp. After one reminder email and a few phone calls, a person from ARDA acknowledged receipt of my email and said my questions are unconnected with their line of business. “We conduct conferences, we don’t publish journals,” he said over the telephone. That ARDA does not publish journals is not true. The ARDA website clearly mentions the “types of journals available with us for publication” classified as high-impact journals, Web of Science journals, SCI/SCIE/SSCI journals and, UGC-Care list journals.

Responding to The Telegraph, an ARDA person commenting about the PNAS paper had said: “Our primary services include proofreading, language editing, plagiarism checking, and formatting assistance in line with journal or conference requirements.” The person also added: “We do not own or operate any academic journal. We do not charge for publication, nor do we guarantee acceptance. Authors come to us with their drafts and often with specific journals in mind. Our role is limited to improving the manuscript’s language, structure, and presentation.”

Workings of ARDA

In the guise of a researcher at a Chennai-based dental college and hospital whose contract is due for renewal in mid-August and desperate to get a “paper” published, I got firsthand information on how ARDA functions. I contacted ARDA on the WhatsApp number mentioned on its website and pretended to have a fully written manuscript on ‘Dental care to prevent plaque’, which I intended to publish in ARDA’s Journal of International Dental and Medical Research (JIDMR).

Now, as per the information posted on the Journal of International Dental and Medical Research website, the journal is published only once in three months — March, June, September, and December. So, getting a paper published in the journal in just a few days before my supposed contract is to be renewed in mid-August was out of the question. Unsurprisingly, the person who responded to my message suggested an alternative — I could get my imaginary paper published in the International Journal of Environmental Sciences instead. It is indexed on Scopus and the ISSN number is 2229-7359.

Retraction Watch co-founder Ivan Oransky confirmed that the International Journal of Environmental Sciences is not on the list of hijacked journals as of date, while Anna Abalkina, Social Scientist at the Free University of Berlin had a word of caution. “The rapid increase in papers [published] makes this journal a candidate for delisting. And it will happen without any doubt, as per what I can see,” she said in an email.

While the ARDA person who messaged me on WhatsApp said the scope of the journal is multidisciplinary, on Scopus, the subject areas that are indicated broadly cover the following three areas — Earth and Planetary Sciences; Geology, Agricultural and Biological Sciences: Ecology, Evolution, Behaviour and Systematics and; Environmental Science: General Environmental Science. My imaginary paper was on ‘Dental care to prevent plaque’, which does not fall under any of the three subject areas covered by the journal. So I looked up at the current issue of the journal (Vol. 11 No. 6 (2025)) which has 30 papers — seven from Indonesia, four from Iraq, two from Malaysia and the remaining 17 from India. Alas, 22 papers have no connection whatsoever with any of the three subject areas in environmental sciences. This explains why Richardson and other authors of the PNAS paper said that 34% to 98.7% of the papers published in ARDA journals are typically “outside of the journal’s stated scope”. Here’s a sample of six papers (the full list can be seen here) published in the current volume of the journal:

1. TP53 As A Early Recurrence-Linked Biomarker In Tongue Squamous Cell Carcinoma: A Proteomic And Bioinformatic Study
2. Deep Hybrid CNN-LSTM Framework For Advanced Social Media Sentiment Analysis In Data-Driven Marketing Analytic
3. Green Entrepreneurship And Innovation As Drivers Of Green Business Performance
4. Impact of Infused Potassium Alum – Treated Diesel on the Performance and Emissions of a CI Engine
5. Analyzing Divergent Thinking Ability of Students on The Topic of Linear Equations in Grade VIII of State Junior High School
6. Study the Metabolism of Fatty Acids in Sera of COVID19 Patients in Duhok City/Iraq

Who needs peer-reviewing?

The person representing ARDA was so “kind” that he assured me that my paper will be published in 10 days flat, in time with the contract renewal process. “Your full paper, we can publish by August 15. If you complete the payment today [August 6, 2025], formatting will be completed tomorrow and sent for publication,” the person said. Phew! Who needs peer-reviewing? Who wants to answer endless questions from stubborn peer-reviewers or repeating some experiments, undertake more studies or share more data to substantiate the findings when a manuscript can be just formatted and published in 10 days flat?

How much will it cost me to get the paper published? Just Rs.25,000, I was told. When I requested for a discount, the charges were quickly dropped to Rs.23,000! Will the charges be halved if I get a coauthor, I asked. “For every author, the fee is Rs.23,000. You can add five-six authors,” the person responded.  

Authorships for a fee

Digging further, I enquired if my name could be added to a few papers published in international journals so the contract renewal becomes easy. Unfortunately, I was told that there is no paper or a journal currently available where my name could be added as an author. “Your paper publication we can do early. Author position in a paper will take time — September-November,” the person messaged me back. We had an author position in medical [journal] last month,” the person responded. “In future, if you need an author position, please let me know.”

Next, I enquired about the charges for authorship in a paper. The reply was swift — Rs.16,000, Rs.15,000, Rs.14,000, Rs.13,000, Rs.12,000 and, Rs.11,000. These charges are for first author position, second author position and so on. So the charges for publishing a paper are Rs.23,000 per author, while the charges to get one’s name added to a paper without doing any work works out far cheaper!

For good measure, the person clarified that these charges are for Indians, and I could Google pay the charges. This was in response to my question if the paper will have authors from outside India. When I didn’t get my pointed question answered, I persisted and asked if my name could be added to papers that have authors from outside India, saying the institution I work for gives extra weightage for papers arising from international collaboration. His response: “Both authors [Indian and international] will be available.” But the person clarified that author positions are “not available for the month of August. In future, if you need, you can let me know.”

In the PNAS papers, Richardson and the other authors say that “paper mills, predatory journals, and brokers likely operate under a number of author procurement models”, wherein local scholars are targeted with no international authorship and another model where authorship is sold to scholars across the world. But here the ARDA person said I could have my name added to papers that have both Indian and international authors. That said, every single paper published in the current issue of the International Journal of Environmental Sciences has authors from the same country. In other words, none of the 30 paper had authors from more than one country.

But I failed to get a bigger discount even when I promised the person that I will get my colleagues to publish in ARDA journals. Was it because researchers from the infamous dental college and hospital in Chennai where I am supposedly working regularly publish in ARDA journals or is it because I was already offered a small discount? I don’t know.

‘This must stop’

“I had read about the alleged unethical involvement of ARDA (Chennai) in promoting the ‘paper-mill’ category of research publications in the article by Richadson et al in the recent issue of PNAS. Given the unfathomed scale and diversity of fraudulent activities associated with the numerous so-called ‘research papers’ being published from India, it is highly likely that the numbers of ‘brokers’ who arrange to publish anything for a fee would also be high,” Dr. S.C. Lakhotia, Distinguished Professor, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, said in an email. “Unless we begin a responsible research assessment where quality rather than quantity of work and its outcome is the major determinant, such malpractices will continue and, unfortunately, further tarnish the image of academics in the country. Such ‘brokers’ and the academic institutions that indulge in unethical activities on a mass scale must be named, penalised and shamed. It is indeed very unfortunate that while sincere researchers suffer lack of adequate funds, the fraudsters cumulatively squander huge amounts of public money on fraudulent publications and get rewarded by securing better ranking! This must stop.”

“India’s Ministry of Education should completely remove publication and citation metrics from NIRF university rankings and NBA/NAAC accreditation processes. These metrics do not reflect actual genuine scholarship, innovation or scientific productivity and only encourage misconduct,” Richardson said in the email. “The UGC should also rewrite its recommendations for hiring and promotion criteria and forbid universities from using publication and citation metrics in their hiring and promotion policies. These interventions would put a massive dent in the market for academic and scientific fraud in India.”