6 Dirty Tactics Found In Academia & Universities | Watch out!

Academia’s incentives can reward gaming the peer-review system, and that pressure can translate directly into more citations, more publications in high-status journals, and ultimately more grant money and promotion. Several “dirty tactics” described in the transcript center on manipulating where papers go, who gets credit, and how quickly results reach the literature—often by exploiting weaknesses in peer review that are supposed to check accuracy and novelty.

One tactic is submitting the same peer-reviewed draft to multiple journals at once, then choosing whichever accepts it first—typically the one with the highest impact factor. Impact factor is treated as a proxy for journal prestige and expected reach, so acceptance there can boost citation counts. The transcript notes that authors are often asked to confirm the manuscript is submitted to only one place, but that checkbox can be ignored. A friend’s experience is cited: identical papers were sent to two journals, and once both journals were informed, both retracted the paper—though the long-term consequences are unclear.

Another cluster of behavior is labeled “paper mafias,” describing networks that steer editorial decisions and authorship to benefit insiders. On editorial boards, editors (including guest editors) can favor work from colleagues whose research aligns with their own, despite expectations of impartiality. Authorship can also be used as currency: names are added in citation circles where collaborators reciprocate by attaching each other’s names to papers, including students and supervisors. The transcript also highlights over-supervision—examples include a PhD with three supervisors and a postdoc with five—framed as a way to spread credit so multiple careers benefit from a single project.

Peer review itself can become a citation funnel. Reviewers may demand that authors add dozens of references to the reviewer’s own work, increasing citation counts. Editors can apply similar pressure by requiring citations to papers within their journal, which can raise the journal’s impact factor. Another method is delaying peer review so a rival’s work misses the publication window; the transcript describes reviewers waiting for months, publishing their own closely related results first, then pushing the newly published work to be cited.

The transcript also describes “author intimidation,” where power dynamics force authors to comply with demands about authorship order or inclusion. A paper can be held back unless certain names are added, even when those individuals contributed little. In more extreme cases, an author can threaten retraction by contacting the journal after publication to claim improper authorship or involvement, potentially preventing the work from ever reaching the literature.

Finally, a “publish with a twist” tactic fragments research by making minimal changes—such as adding a small new detail or using a different molecule—then republishing the near-duplicate results in another journal as if they were wholly new. The transcript argues that the publish-or-perish incentive structure encourages quantity over quality, leading to more papers, more citations, and more cluttered evidence, rather than fewer, stronger studies that can be reproduced and trusted.