I think we need a better descriptive title than “papermills.“ Something more like “Fraud Mills”. People who submitted these to a journal need to be fired and prosecuted. Same for the people who aided and abetted in this Fraud.
Way back in 1983 I was working with a colleague on a rather complicted process simulation using Chemshare (I think it was called). We had to dig deep through the library to find what few articles there were on the subject. We finally found one from the USSR - the old Soviet Union.
We called up Chemshare support and bounced off a few ways to simulate it. We mentioned the paper we found that discussed this subject. The Chemshare rep told told us to throw it away. Anything from the USSR was suspect. The Communists were trying to convince the world they were diligently working on research and it was all garbage.
And here we are doing it, too. What have we become?