“Secret Friends of Russian (Propaganda) Science” is the title of an article posted on the Vox Ukraine platform.

The authors conducted a thorough analysis of the question why the aggressor country’s science remains untouchable, even with 19,000 different sanctions imposed on Russia. It actively spreads propaganda through scientific publications.

Oleksii Plastun argued: “Russian scientists, as well as their authorities, designate the occupied territories as Russian in affiliations and editorial board biographies. For example, if the author is from Donetsk, the article will be signed “Donetsk, Russia”. Besides, Russian scholars have even managed to add Kherson to Russia, which was occupied for a relatively short time. Besides, international publishers keep working with Russian universities and research institutes that express war support”.

To be published in a journal, any article must be analyzed by several reviewers. Such an editing procedure is necessary to sift out low-quality papers. Therefore, the article authors wanted to understand who reviews Russian papers and gives them the status of a peer-reviewed publication.

Out of 300 Russian journals published by international publishers or added to the Scopus database in 2022-2023, we selected 140 with two or more foreigners in their editorial boards. We selected 709 foreign members of editorial boards in these journals. We wrote to each of them, citing examples of Russian propaganda in scientific articles. We asked if they were planning to leave the editorial board.

8 people had already died. 9 persons retired. There were 148 people from whom we received responses as of 20 August 2024. 45 persons learned from us for the first time that they were members of editorial boards. 100 individuals were on the list only formally, that is they did not perform any reviewer duties. At the same time, 89 scientists reported that they planned to resign from editorial boards or had already written a letter of resignation to Elsevier. 22 researchers said they would continue to cooperate. 5 people did not express any position on this issue.

Thus, Russian journals mislead readers about their editorial boards. They violate the academic integrity principles.

The article focuses on the following questions. Is it necessary to impose sanctions on Russian science? Why do international publishers print Russian journals? What work is being done by the Ministry of Education and Science in this situation? What can be done to change the loyal attitude to science of the aggressor country?

In this article, the authors show the problem scale and call on concerned scientists to get involved in solving it.