How do scientific research articles get published? How do we know their results aren’t faked? What exactly are scientific journals and how do researchers get revenue from publishing their research work?
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The articles are submitted to journals or conferences for publication. They are then ‘peer reviewed’.
The peer review process is largely a check on relevance and basic sanity. The reviewers want to ensure the work is meaningful and not simply a rehash of previous work (although the standards for this these days are incredibly low). They also want to ensure the author is using plausible methods within the field.
In terms of data faking, we don’t know. We simply trust that the researcher was honest. Unless the work is very significant or has real-world consequences, no one is likely to replicate it. However, almost any work with far-reaching consequences *will* be replicated and they’ll discover that the conclusions are inaccurate.
When you look at people who have been caught in academic fraud, it’s almost always because they’ve established a pattern over years of publishing too-good-to-be-true work that someone finally figures out *isn’t* true.
In terms of getting revenue from their research work, researchers normally don’t. Your published works are a way of building your CV. Your CV is what gets you hired in academia and certain industry jobs. If you don’t publish anything, you’re unlikely to be considered for these jobs.
Researchers do earn money from patents, but you don’t need to publish to secure a patent – and, in many cases, it would be prudent to not publish your results if you’re planning to monetize them in this fashion.
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