Springer has put a cell biology journal on hold, “effective immediately,” after finding a “pattern of inappropriate and compromised peer review.”
Here’s the brief statement from the publisher:
An internal review of the journal Cell Biochemistry and Biophysics has revealed a pattern of inappropriate and compromised peer review. As a result, the scientific integrity of the journal cannot be guaranteed. As a first measure, in addition to launching a thorough investigation, we have placed the journal on hold effective immediately. We will be providing further information on springer.com as events warrant.
Last year, the publisher had to retract 16 nonsense papers generated by a computer program. In August, the journal retracted a paper about anesthesia waste gases for plagiarism.
The journal has an impact factor of 2.380, according to its site, and ranks 124 out of 185 in the cell biology category of Thomson Scientific’s Journal Citations Reports.
A Springer spokesperson told us the publisher couldn’t comment further, as the investigation is ongoing.
We’re trying to reach editor in chief Edward J. Massaro and will update with news as we learn it. [See update.]
Update, 3:35 p.m., 3/13/2015: We’ve spoken with Massaro, but the conversation didn’t clear things up. Massaro told us he was not informed about the reason for the hold, nor has anyone from the journal contacted him since it happened more than a week ago:
I honestly have no idea.
what the publisher’s move is all about, he said, but he denied having done anything unethical regarding peer review.
I have enough information to know what we’re doing and how we’re doing it.
Massaro called the stoppage “completely idiotic” and said it threatened to seriously undermine the journal’s standing.
I’m deadly afraid of the fact that having closed down my journal we may be losing a lot of primo people [who will submit to other publications].
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This is a US based journal, with an almost entirely US based editorial board. Despite this, the March issue (which contains 100 separate articles, quite eye-roll inducing by itself!) is almost entirely comprised of articles from China, with large numbers of papers having shared authors (or at least authors with common names – impossible to verify if they are the same without ORCIDs).
Going back 2-3 years and looking at TOCs, the journal appears to have gone from 10-20 articles per issue, to 50-70 and now 100 per issue. The wide mix of authors from 2011-2012 has now become almost exclusively from China, with the bulk coming from a couple of institutions.
I cannot imagine a scenario in which increasing the article count several fold and sourcing a large volume of content from a limited number of places would allow any journal to retain peer review standards.
There is one more retraction in this journal, also from a group from China:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12013-014-9880-0
Cell Biochemistry and Biophysics
September 2014, Volume 70, Issue 1, p 703
Date: 12 Apr 2014
RETRACTED ARTICLE: Effects of Osteopontin on Expression of IL-6 and IL-8 Inflammatory Factors in Human Knee Osteoarthritis Chondrocytes
Weiwu Yao, Xiaodong Chen, De Li, Peng Wang, Hanlong Xin, Jianhua Wang
(1)Department of Radiology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University Sixth People’s Hospital, Shanghai, 200233, China
(2)Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, XinHua Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, 200092, China
(3)Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, The Second Affiliated Hospital, Xi’an Jiaotong University College of Medicine, Xi’an, 710004, China
Reason: “The corresponding author and the first author retracted their article. Due to an incorrect method used in the experiments the data cannot be reproduced.”
If Springer follows COPE retraction policies, then why can we not observe the original paper with a red-stamped RETRACTED across each page?
I’d like to see that paper, too. There is another paper with the exact same title but with a different group of Chinese authors (http://www.europeanreview.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/3580-3586.pdf).
Well spotted! The abstracts are very similar.
Cell Biochem and Biophysics abstract: “Knee osteoarthritis (OA) is a major cause of disability, particularly in the elderly. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of osteopontin (OPN) in the pathogenesis of OA by studying the effect of OPN on expression of IL-6 and IL-8 inflammatory factors in human knee OA chondrocytes. One-step type II collagenase digestive method was used to isolate OA chondrocytes from sectional cartilage specimens of 16 primary knee OA patients undergoing total knee replacement surgery. Synchronized first-generation chondrocytes were then treated with 100 ng/ml or 1 μg/ml OPN concentrations. We analyzed changes in cell morphology of OA chondrocytes before and after OPN treatment and evaluated expression levels of IL-6 and IL-8 in the cells by real-time q-PCR. Adherent chondrocytes formed clusters of irregular polygonal shape with intercellular pseudopodia extension. After OPN treatment, cells became fusiform or irregularly shaped, and the number of intercellular pseudopodia significantly decreased. 48 h after OPN treatment, and the expression of IL-6 and IL-8 in OA chondrocytes in culture in vitro significantly increased (P < 0.05) comparing to control. The increase in IL-6 and IL-8 expression correlated with the increase in OPN concentration. OPN can up-regulate expression of IL-6 and IL-8 cytokines in human OA chondrocytes, and this up-regulation is directly related to the concentration of OPN."
Eur Rev Med Pharm Sci Abstract: “OBJECTIVE: Osteoarthritis (OA) is a chronic musculoskeletal disease characterized by progressive destruction of articular cartilage, OA lead to chronic pain and functional restrictions in affected joints. The present study was to investigate the role of osteopontin (OPN) in the athogenesis of OA through studying the effect of OPN on expression of IL-6 and IL-8 inflammatory factors in human OA chondrocytes. PATIENTS AND METHODS: One-step type II collagenase digestive method was used to isolate OA chondrocytes from sectional cartilage specimens of 16 primary knee OA patients received total knee replacement surgery. Synchronized first-generation chondrocytes were then treated with OPN (100 ng/ml or 1 µg/mL). The changes in cell morphology of OA chondrocytes were analyzed before and after treated with OPN; and the expression levels of IL-6 and IL-8 were evaluated by real-time q-PCR. RESULTS: Chondrocytes were successfully isolated from human OA knee cartilage, and the viability of isolated chondrocytes was 92.11±3.13%. Adherent chondrocytes formed clusters of irregular polygonal shape with intercellular pseudopodia extension. After OPN treatment, cells became fusiform or irregularly shaped, and the number of intercellular pseudopodia decreased significantly. The mRNA expression of IL-6 increased to 1.83 times at 0.1 µg/ml of OPN and 3.1 times at the dose of 1 µg/ml; the expression of IL-8 increased to 1.57 and 3.27 times at the dose of 0.1 µg/ml and 1 µg/ml respectively. CONCLUSIONS: OPN could up-regulate expression of IL-6 and IL-8 cytokines in human OA chondrocytes, and the expression increased with the increasing concentration of OPN, which might be one of the potential mechanisms of OPN in the development of OA.”
It seems that the two papers describe the same study with the same results. But the author lists are completely different. What is going on? Also, if the Cell Biochem and Biophysics paper was retracted for “incorrect methods”, shouldn’t the other one also be retracted….?
“Also, if the Cell Biochem and Biophysics paper was retracted for ‘incorrect methods’, shouldn’t the other one also be retracted….?”
Well, not if the “incorrect method” of the Cell Biochem and Biophysics authors was the wholesale copying of the other authors’ paper.
Right, but if that’s the case then “plagiarism” should have given as the reason, not “incorrect methods, results cannot be reproduced.”
Is this yet another way for authors and journals to avoid saying the P-word?
Springer states: “the scientific integrity of the journal cannot be guaranteed”
Let’s give some time for Springer to explain in detail what went wrong, when it went wrong, who was responsible, and why it was only detected now. And of course, how many other journals may be suffering from the same unspecified “problem”.
Exemplary move by Springer. I hope of the 184 Cell Biology journals at least 100 follow suit. Next to no one reads them anyway, and even fewer people would miss them.
Wouldn’t it be great if this trend picked up and set the stage for the “great purge” in scientific publishing? But the opposite is happening of course. We are threatened to be drowned by an avalanche of irrelevant papers. And although their Results section doesn’t matter, their reference lists do. As they are generally of similarly poor quality as the rest of the article, they can potentially distort the impact factor metrics at large. Has this been studied by anyone?