Anna Abalkina
Anna Abalkina | |
|---|---|
| Alma mater | Financial University in Moscow; University of Perugia |
| Occupation(s) | Scholar, research fellow |
| Employer | Free University of Berlin |
| Known for | Research on scientific misconduct, paper mills, hijacked journals |
Anna Abalkina is a Russian scholar and research fellow affiliated with the Free University of Berlin. Her expertise lies in examining scientific misconduct and fraudulent activities, particularly focusing on paper mills and hijacked journals. In 2024, the journal Nature recognized her as one of the ten individuals who significantly influenced the scientific community that year.
Academic career
Abalkina pursued international economics at the Financial University in Moscow and earned her PhD on the topic of Russian banking institutions from the University of Perugia. Her professional experience includes positions at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the World Bank, and UN Trade and Development. She currently serves as a research fellow at the Institute for East European Studies within the Free University of Berlin.
Her investigations primarily address unethical practices in scholarly publishing. While affiliated with the Financial University, she identified that two of her research papers had been plagiarized by a student from a different university; instead of retracting these articles, the publishing journal permitted the addition of citations to her original work.
Since 2013, Abalkina has partnered with Dissernet, an organization dedicated to uncovering plagiarism in Russian academic theses and publications, helping to expose thousands of fraudulent academic credentials across various institutions.
In 2019, she revealed a 'paper mill' operation known as International Publisher LLC, which offers authorship opportunities on more than 100 questionable articles published in 68 journals from reputable publishers such as Elsevier and Wiley. More recently, her research has extended to hijacked journals—illegitimate websites impersonating genuine academic periodicals—and she has created a detection tool for such journals hosted by Retraction Watch.
Her investigative efforts have resulted in her inclusion on a Russian social media monitoring list maintained by Roskomnadzor.
Honours and awards
In 2023, Abalkina, together with co-author Dorothy Bishop, was honored by the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science for their publication titled Paper mills: a novel form of publishing malpractice affecting psychology.
The journal Nature selected Abalkina as one of ten influential figures shaping science in 2024.
Selected works
External links
- Science sleuth honoured in Nature, interview featuring Anna Abalkina on Australian radio station ABC, 15 December 2024
- Paper mills: challenges, current understanding and unanswered questions — Presentation by Anna Abalkina for Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford, 25 April 2024, available on YouTube