Why plagiarize if you can simply make up your own publication (which is not yours…)

In a follow-up of my previous post https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/7504547925741326964/3379738657311648725 I came across a new example of this kind of scientific misconduct/fraud thanks to the following question in RG https://www.researchgate.net/post/International_Journal_of_Science_and_Research_Archive_is_it_predatory 

I stumbled in the profile of a certain “Ruchit Parekh” https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ruchit-Parekh-4 on the following ‘paper’:

 

 

And pretty fast I became aware that this ‘paper’ is an exact copy of the following original:

 

 

Just changed the authors, affiliations and title (a little bit) and voila! You have your own paper...not! 😡

Is this a one time event? No, just have a look at:

and compare this with the original:

What a blunt example of fraud! It is apparently part of an attempt to artificially ‘boost’ citations (with numerous fake profiles in RG, all full of this type of papers and AI generated papers) and to create an ‘impressive’ Google Scholar profile https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Ab2kOjgAAAAJ&hl=nl&oi=ao    

Besides the desire to be seen as a highly cited ‘researcher’ I cannot understand why someone is doing this. It is pointless and makes a mockery of something what used to be an achievement: publishing in a good journal and receive citations in an honest and well-deserved way.

Just an update (October 2025). The profile of this imposter Ruchit Parekh is (finally) removed. It is sad to see how much time and effort it took before this happened:

-I mobilized some dedicated RG members to report this imposter

-I send countless reports to RG and focused on the most serious fraud (stealing Elsevier papers by just adjusting the authors and title)

-I informed the authors of these Elsevier papers and asked them to report this to RG and asked them to activate the journals (and Elsevier as well)

-I informed the authors of a number of the papers which have been plagiarized by this imposter and ask them to report this to RG and ask them to activate the journal in which they published as well

-I created a number of PubPeer posts to report the plagiarism by this imposter, see for example https://pubpeer.com/publications/65D04389BD83374630995FCAB91F66

I am afraid that only the action of the authors (and the publishers behind the papers) who were the victim of plagiarism really forced RG to act.

The good news is that this obvious imposter is removed from this platform

PS. The bad news is that they are unwilling (or unable) to act on the phenomenon (which was new to me) that these fake profiles uploaded versions of papers (not authored by them) in other researchers’ profiles in order to add dozens of references (which primarily benefit this imposter), see for example

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/385419287_Artificial_intelligence_and_the_digitalization_of_finance_in_Latin_America_evidence_from_Brazil the reference list is NOT the reference list of the original paper (the person who uploaded this fake paper with non-existing references is in the meantime removed either by RG or by themselves).

 

It is a mess and underlines the message in the recent paper https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02182-w RG is facing a huge challenge and action is required. 

My personal recommendation would be: create some sort of an advisory board of dedicated RG members that can communicate with the RG team directly and the commitment for a more constructive attitude of this RG team to act after receiving well substantiated reports.