Crisis of Prosperit: Internal Shortcuts and External Setbacks

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Academic prosperity? In reality, it’s bad money driving out good. The growing number of students in cybersecurity research has led to a surge in paper production, creating the illusion of progress. But this rapid expansion has strained the peer review system—reviewers are being added hastily, review cycles are getting shorter, and as a result, the quality of reviews is declining. Meanwhile the same time, research supervision is becoming increasingly superficial, with many mentors unable or unwilling to provide meaningful guidance.

Shortcuts undermine fairness. From ghostwriting and ghost-submission to collusion in peer review, the use of shortcuts in academic publishing is corroding the foundation of merit-based evaluation. Initiatives like ACM Protect aim to combat these practices—not to target outright academic fraud, but to restore fairness by eliminating unfair advantages. While such crackdowns may bring a sense of justice to those who follow the rules, they also produce unintended consequences: Chinese professors may fail performance evaluations, students may be unable to graduate, and faculty with blemished records can become targets of political manipulation. The broader fallout is reputational—China’s academic image is further damaged, not just by geopolitics, but by its own internal contradictions and that it handed critics the very knife used against it.

Scientists have a motherland, and science has national borders. In an increasingly interconnected world, the geopolitical landscape shapes how scientific research is perceived and received. While the pursuit of knowledge should transcend borders, the reality is that political dynamics often affect the collaboration and recognition of scientific work. When national interests intersect with research, the integrity of science can be compromised, and the impact of one's work can be influenced by factors beyond the quality of the research itself.