Academic Ghost Writing Business: A Yes or A No!

Being an academic content writer which unfairly is termed as Academic Ghost Writer; I have been crossed path with many PhD Scholars and researchers. The only thing that I found in common in all these geeky beings is their struggle to write a good piece of research draft (apart from their obsession about their PhD topics)!

Despite of having exceptional experimental or research data with them, most of them either went out of words while drafting research results or they did not know what is to presented and what is to be skipped.

Some tried taking some external help other kept struggling for years by themselves or asking their guides to assist.

I know this situation is only believable if you are into research or Ph.D.

So let’s see what data says…

The Nature PhD Survey 2019 shows that most of the PhD scholars who are in love with their PhD decision, have however reported to have a worsened experience growing over time.

Image Courtesy: Nature 575, 403–406 (2019); doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03459-7

There are many reasons behind the scene but one of the prominent perils is that in most cases, supervisor is not always the way one expects. It is a bitter truth that most of the times mentors are either so engrossed in their other professional responsibility that it becomes difficult for them to pay attention to their scholars. In such a situation the student is always in a dilemma. The questions like “what my results mean?” “How to write these results and get them published?” “What has to be the flow of the paper?” and the list goes on…..

So here comes the role of academic content writers aka. Ghost Writers. These are the under rated subject matter experts and writers who take no authorship to write, edited or fine tune your research draft as per requirement, instead they charge you for the same.

The ghost writing business is not just restricted to academia rather it is commonly used practice to hire ghostwriters for enhancing brand SEO through blogs. This business is spread all across the world covering majorly North America, Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, India and Central & South America, etc. According to an article in medium.com, a numerous publication houses have admitted to the fact that more than 70% of their academic and non academic publications were done in assistance of ghostwriter.

However the concept of Academic Ghost Writing is debatable business in academia even though its market is growing tremendously below the ground. Most academicians put a big, wide “NO” for such a services saying:

1. “Academic ghost writing business is a fraud”?

2. “Once style of writing is a personal affair, so it cannot be just done by anyone else other than the Scholar. It will kill the inner essence of writing”!

3. “It is an absolute unethical practice as it is a money making business!”

In my personal opinion these statements sounds pretty full of “moral”, but the ground reality has no match.

How many good researchers are good writer? I tried my best to find some statistics related to this but could not. My experience says not all good researchers are good writers.

Suppose let’s take an instance, when a scholar has been working too hard to bring out a particular cancer drug for more than 4 years but he/she is unable to write it in a presentable manner. This will bring the entire invention down to the bottom line again which is a huge loss to humanity in totality.

So now let suppose, what if he/she chooses to reach an academic ghost writing agency who can pour down their expertise in drafting her experiment and results in reader friendly and publishable manner? The research will help in revolution in cancer treatment.

So here is the fine line difference that does not make this business a fraud. It is not about fooling the readers or publishers with some false information rather it’s an attempt for value addition of the research work for knowledge transfer and dissemination.

Moreover coming the writing being a personal affair, Yes! It might be for someone who has exceptional writing skills and yes they obviously will not reach a ghost writer anyways. But for someone with no writing talent there is no inner essence attached!

Thirdly, “the unethical money making business”!

The ghost writing agencies or freelancers charge for their bit of expertise. “There is no such as a free lunch”. Even the supervisor is guiding the PhD as they are being paid for that! Education is no more a free business, so is academic content writing.

Being in this career for last 6 years I have written and edited numerous academic write-ups without any authorship to earn my bread and butter and I am absolutely fine with this. Initially I quietly kept it an underground job, finding it shady. However as now I have chains of ghost writer working under me, I feel proud that I and my writers have definitely helped many exceptional research works to reach its actual value.

It’s like becoming voice of someone’s research work!