A physics publisher is retracting 494 papers after an investigation “indicated that some papers may have been created, manipulated, and/or sold by a commercial entity” – aka a paper mill.
The vast majority – 463 articles – are from the Journal of Physics: Conference Series, while 21 are from IOP Conference Series: Materials Science & Engineering, and 10 are from IOP Conference Series: Earth & Environmental Science. A bit less than a third – 142 – are appearing today.
In a statement, Kim Eggleton, Head of Peer Review and Research Integrity at IOP Publishing, tells Retraction Watch:
These articles are being retracted following an allegation that raised concerns regarding several manuscripts. IOP Publishing has conducted a comprehensive investigation, which indicated that some papers may have been created, manipulated, and/or sold by a commercial entity.
A typical retraction notice:
This article has been retracted by IOP Publishing following an allegation that raises concerns this article may have been created, manipulated, and/or sold by a commercial entity. In addition, IOP Publishing has seen no evidence that reliable peer review was conducted on this article, despite the clear standards expected of and communicated to conference organisers.
The authors of the article have been given opportunity to present evidence that they were the original and genuine creators of the work, however at the time of publication of this notice, IOP Publishing has not received any response. IOP Publishing has analysed the article and agrees there are enough indicators to cause serious doubts over the legitimacy of the work and agree this article should be retracted. The authors are encouraged to contact IOP Publishing Limited if they have any comments on this retraction.
Eggleton tells Retraction Watch:
We were alerted by an independent whistle-blower, Nick Wise (he has consented to being named), who noticed some similarities in a number of papers. We began investigating and found other similarities that pointed to a network of content being created by one source, despite multiple different authors being listed on the papers. We don’t publicly share the signals that cause us to believe articles are not the genuine work of the authors, as not to reveal too much information to the perpetrators, effectively handing them a “cheat sheet” to avoid being caught in the future.
Wise was also involved in flagging issues that led to IOP Publishing’s retraction of 350 papers earlier this year because an “investigation has uncovered evidence of systematic manipulation of the publication process and considerable citation manipulation,” and that was not the first time.
Eggleton said that paper mills are
producing fake research to order, used by unscrupulous “researchers” to boost their publication record. These are incredibly damaging as their prevalence erodes credibility, trust and confidence in science. We take publishing misconduct very seriously and are committed to increasing confidence and trust in academic research. As in this situation, we don’t shy away from retracting papers that meet the Committee for Publication Ethics (COPE) criteria for retraction and see it as our duty to protect and correct the version of the record.
Reached at the Ninth International Congress on Peer Review and Scientific Publication in Chicago, two researchers who have been at the forefront of identifying problematic papers that “This massive retraction of problematic papers will certainly help to depollute the scientific literature.”
Guillaume Cabanac and Cyril Labbé, who created the Problematic Paper Screener, tell Retraction Watch:
Correcting the record is of utmost importance to prevent readers and AIs (performing text mining for literature-based discovery) from building on unreliable papers and spreading errors.
Filtering out problematic/fraudulent papers upfront should be publishers’ and reviewers’ top priority to block paper mill productions.
There is growing evidence that the publishing industry is under pressure and flooded by the production of paper mills.
We believe publishers should source intelligence from PubPeer and other post-publication peer review platforms (even more).
Dedicated sleuths, under their own name or anonymously, contribute valuable reports pro bono; these should be seen as red flags to investigate.
Cabanac and Labbe said that Wise “is an innovator: he designs clever methods to expose fraud.”
In short, they said: “He rocks!”
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IOP; ‘The Institute of Physics a learned society and Profesional body that works to advance physics education, research and application. It accredits undergraduate degrees ( BSc/BA and MSci/MPhys) in British and Irish universities………..2This is what IOP stands for and the standards that it is suppose to uphold.
I am just a layman who loves to read any article about space and time to understand and empower myself as to how the universe behaves.
In this very advanced stage of modern technology/ internet/algorithms/ you name it, I find it mind boggling and beyond belief that an institute as described above can allow itself be used in such a way and even be mentioned in the same breath and sentence with any “paper mill” prodused article. IOP is most definitely the last publishing company one would expect to publish “paper mill” associated articles.
And only to have discovered that they have done so after having published almost 500 such suspected articles is no laughing matter and to read in your article that the persons “sleuths” from the outside who have now discovered all this and to say “he rocks” is not funny or something to be proud of.
Just my thoughts on the above article, if it is not a just another ‘paper mill’ article that is.
Kind regards,
M.N. Joseph
Why direct your resentment against Nick Wise for exposing this systematic malfeasance?
Probable reason, it negatively impacted someone’s wallet.
A sad statement on integrity in science.
I did research and wrote papers at a university, and the head of the department required that I add authors names to my publication that did absolutely nothing to contribute to the paper. I was powerless to do anything about it. Outside of this, of course, there was nothng wrong with the content of the paper except that people got credit for the paper without doing anything to contribute to it.