WANG Aijie Published 14 Articles on "Water Research" in the First 8 Months of 2025


During the first eight months of 2025, WANG Aijie (王爱杰), a prolific author at Harbin Institute of Technology (哈尔滨工业大学), has published 14 articles on Water Research, an Elsevier title, and dozens more on other journals. According to her Google Scholar profile, she has published over 70 articles since the January of this year.

There is no established consensus on what constitutes an appropriate annual publication output for scientists, let alone any widely accepted threshold for the maximum number of papers one should publish in the same journal each year. But WANG's number is concerning. Her output in Water Research during the first eight months of 2025 already exceeds her total publications in the same journal for all of 2024.

The 5GH Team does not allege that Water Research's editorial board engaged in improper practices. On the contrary, Dr. Mark van Loosdrecht and other editorial members have consistently demonstrated a commitment to transparent dialogue with the scientific community regarding their publishing standards. The team raises these concerns solely to foster a more substantive discussion about publication ethics within the field.








Author: WU Guangheng

Founder and Chair of the 5GH Foundation

E-Mail: wu@5gh.org.cn

Document ID: 5GH-2025-000008.R11

Publication Date: 2025.08.26

This article is licensed under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International License

WANG Aijie’s Questionable Editorial Contributions on Environmental Research

Previously, the 5GH team and our international allies exposed some questionable editorial contributions of WANG Aijie as Editor-in-Chief on Environmental Research, an Elsevier title. As the investigation went on, we found more concerning editorial activities from Wang, a professor at Harbin Institute of Technology and CAS Research Center for Eco-Environmental Science, and she was also a winner for the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, China. Here, we update the list for her questionable editorial contributions.