India, Oct. 16 -- The call was from an unknown number and my colleague picked it up by mistake. The person on the other end, instead of hawking property in Noida or Gurgaon, mentioned that she belonged to a research organisation. This piqued my colleague's curiosity. He was stuck in one of the perennial rush-hour traffic jams in Delhi and so he continued the conversation.

What he found out was astonishing: The person told him that their organisation is in the business of getting one's research published in Scopus-listed or those listed by the University Grants Commission Consortium for Academic and Research Ethics (UGC CARE), for a fee. This was not all; you didn't need to actually do anything. They would even write the paper for you (of...