International Publisher Ltd. (or International Publisher LLC)[1] is an academic paper mill company that coordinates the sale of fake authorships on research papers for publication in an academic journal.[2] The company is headquartered in Moscow (Russia) with offices in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Iran, and lists its chief editor as Ksenia Badziun.[2] Its website has existed since 2018.[2]
Buyers can preselect a number of critera for their desired article. Many papers are created specifically for the purpose of selling co-authorships, and only after a sufficient number of slots are sold, and the company recruits writers to produce at least some of these papers.[3] Others may be otherwise legitimate articles; there is evidence that it also approaches authors published in high-quality journals to sell co-authorship slots.[3] Slots are priced according to the prestige of the journal and the position of the slot in the list of purported collaborators.[2]