Tempted to use a paper writing service to get published? It will destroy your academic career! We’ll teach you how to write your own research papers!
As you know, Magda and I created Motivated Academic to support you to grow as successful researchers and academics. That is why we’re doing all we can to ensure that the work we share adds value to your career development.
So far on our blog, we tend to provide advice, frameworks and tools for motivation, paper writing and general research career development. As you probably know, I’ve gathered significant experience in academic publishing – I’ve authored over 50 academic papers in prestigious Q1 journals and I’m an editor with recognised international publishers, such as Elsevier, Wiley and Oxford University Press. I’ve compiled all my learning in a step-by-step paper writing course that will help you get published in international journals.
Reflecting on what I’ve already written about and the recent discussions on research groups, I noted that I hadn’t talked much about the dark side of academic publishing. However, some time ago, I did share my thoughts on how you can avoid publishing your research in predatory journals.
But I’ve noted a worrying trend, especially on unmanaged Facebook groups – professional paper writing services! So let me tell you why using such paper writing companies will hurt, or even destroy, your academic career in the long term.
Table of Contents
What is a paper writing service online?
If you haven’t come across or haven’t been approached by one of the paper writing companies, consider yourself lucky. The more I’ve engaged on LinkedIn and Facebook, the more people approached me to offer their paper writing services, research paper publishing services or requested me to write research papers for others.
I need to distinguish here between paper writing services and research paper publishing services.
The former, paper writing service, implies that someone else writes a research paper for you and then you present that paper as your own. Such paper mills are quite common for assignments but have become increasingly seen for academic publishing. It means that you pay someone to write a research paper for you. The cost for such an online writing service can be between $500 to $5000, depending on the area.
The latter, research paper publishing services, implies that you’ve already written a research paper and need it to be published. In this case, you may be offered a guarantee that your paper will be published in the Q1-Q3 journal within 7-14 days. But, of course, you would need to pay someone for such publication service, usually on top of the article processing charges. Based on the outrageous offers I’ve seen on Facebook, the cost of such publication service can vary between $500 to $10,000.
A variation of the above would be the paper co-authorship service. What is it? It is a “service” where someone adds you to a paper that has already been through a peer review in exchange of $600 to $5000, depending on whether you’re 1st, 2nd, or nth co-author…
Why using a paper writing service can hurt your academic career?
Does the above seem like a dream? I understand that paying for getting their work published or being named as a co-author on a paper is the way to go for some people.
I do hope that you, dear motivated academic, are not one of those people.
In my view, not only is paying for such paper writing services or research paper publishing services by far unethical, but it can also destroy your academic career.
Talking about the ethics of publishing, whenever you submit a paper to a journal, you are asked whether the work that you present is your own and whether another journal is considering it. If you pay someone to do research paper, you may violate the ethical standards of the journal. This may not have significant implications if you’re further down your career, but if you’re a Master student or a PhD student and this journal forms a part of your research thesis, using a paper writing service may get you in trouble. For example, if the paper gets retracted by any chance, you may lose your PhD!
Although the probability of the above is rather small, these things do happen. But believe me or not, this isn’t the worst thing that may happen.
Let’s consider a scenario.
You’re a PhD student and you know that you need to publish at least 3 research papers to get your PhD. You have two options. Pay someone to do research paper for you or learn how to publish your own research paper.
If you decide to use research paper publishing services or paper writing services, you’d need to fork out, on average, $1,000 per paper. That’s $3,000 for the 3 papers you need to publish to get your PhD. The benefit? You’ll get your papers published with little work input and reduced stress.
If you decide to write your own papers, you can try to learn how to publish research paper in international journal for free yourselves. This should not be a problem if you have a good supervisor who can provide valuable feedback. But, of course, you’ll spend more time writing 3 papers and getting them published – after all, the full peer-review process at international journals takes, on average, about 2-6 months.
This may become challenging if your supervisors don’t support you properly. To address this, I created a paper writing course that is currently available at less than the third ($279) of the price you would be asked to pay a single paper in a journal of questionable quality.
Now, why should you learn how to publish your own paper rather than pay someone to publish a research paper for you?
It’s really simple. If you decide to pay someone, you won’t develop the paper writing skill that is crucial for succeeding in academia. I know learning this skill is daunting at the beginning. Believe me, I’ve been rejected so many times. But right now, I don’t need to rely on paper writing services to get my research out there. Imagine if I were to pay, on average, $1,000 per each of the 53 papers that I’ve published so far.
That’s $53k that my university wouldn’t pay because I’m responsible for writing my own papers. I don’t need to pay anyone to get my work published. That is unless I want to make it open access – but this is another subject!
You can see now that relying on a paper writing service or research paper publishing service WILL LIMIT the number of papers you can publish. This is not only in terms of the number of papers you publish, but also quality. Each time I see someone offering the research paper publishing services, they don’t mention the journal or mention a low-quality (Q4) journal.
Sometimes, they offer to publish your work in Q1/Q2 journal, but they may be using unofficial metrics. Whenever I check, these journals don’t exist in Scopus or Web of Science. As the track record of academic publications is still considered a key performance metric in academic progression, fellowship applications and grant applications, you can see how relying on such services can harm your career.
But do you know what is even worse? If you become an academic and will be responsible for supervising Master students and PhD students, how will you teach them to write papers if you don’t know this skill yourself? It will become increasingly expensive for them and, possibly, your research group to publish if you rely on online writing services. And lack of such paper writing skills is often why supervisors do not provide valuable feedback. So you can see how the loop closes now!
I need to clarify here that I don’t consider editing or proofreading services as paper writing services. The former only aim to improve the quality of language and clarity of your work, and it is still you who wrote the entire thing.
How to publish your own research paper?
Now I know I’ve got the entire course and workshops dedicated to this subject. This is an important piece of information that I want to share as widely as possible so that you won’t get scammed.
Do you know that you can submit your own research papers in journals free of cost? That is right. Many international journals follow the subscription model. This means that your paper will be behind the paywall after publication, and you will need to transfer the copyright, but you wouldn’t need to pay anything to publish it. And the bonus? Green Open Access! It means that you can share the author accepted copy via depositories such as ResearchGate or Academia.edu.
How to submit a research paper to a journal? Here is the process I always follow:
- Identify the journal that is likely to accept your paper. Check top publishers, such as Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, Oxford University Press, Taylor & Francis, and identify journals the scope of which align with your paper. Your university may also have a list of preferred journals.
- Develop submission documents. You’d usually need the manuscript file, supplementary information, cover letter, research highlights and graphical abstract. For a detailed list, check the author guidelines of the journal you selected.
- Create an account on the submission portal (if you haven’t done it already).
- Load the documents onto the submission portal and provide any additional information, including authors, recommended reviewers, area classification and keywords.
- Check the proof of your manuscript.
- Submit the manuscript for consideration.
Conclusions
There are many people trying to make money via paper writing services and research paper publication services. Unfortunately, such paper writing companies rarely care about the quality of work and focus solely on quality. I know there are many online writing service options that can save you some time while doing your research. But are they worth it?
In the long term, using these services may harm your academic career. Learning to write academic papers is one of the key skills that each academic must develop to succeed in academia. That is, if you want to publish your work yourself and teach others how to do it.
Usually, it would be your supervisor who should help you develop this skill. But if this is not the case and you want to become a truly independent researcher, I’m here to help. Check out our Knowledge Hub and paper writing courses that Magda and I developed to support your career. If you’ve got any questions, feel free to contact us today!
P.S. You can see that Scopus just deindexed more than 700 journals across different research areas. The fact that the journal is indexed in Scopus, doesn’t automatically mean that it is legit!
