A journal co-published by two scientific societies is retracting nearly 80 papers after an “investigation into peer review fraud.”
The Journal of Electronic Imaging is retracting the articles – all originally published in special sections between 2021 and 2023 – starting this week. The journal is co-published by “SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics,” and IS&T, the Society for Imaging Science and Technology.
According to a press release:
The publishers found evidence of large-scale manipulation of the peer review process, including fake reviewer accounts, repeating reviewers, and generic reviewer reports throughout different special sections. In addition, many out-of-scope papers were discovered to have been published in these special sections.
A review by external experts also:
identified many instances of poorly formed experiments, out-of-date references, evidence of AI-generated language, and limited datasets.
In the release, Gaurav Sharma, vice president of publications at IS&T and former editor in chief of the journal, said:
The manipulation and subversion of the JEI peer review process by a handful of bad actors is deplorable, and we will not let them profit from their shameful actions. We will sanction the perpetrators and correct the scholarly record. We have also added new safeguards in our processes to thwart any future attempts at peer review manipulation.
The case is just the latest to shine a spotlight on special issues, which seem vulnerable to paper mills. Such operations sell whole papers and authorships.
Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.
Peer review itself is a scam. Either you take responsibility for what you choose to believe or you are not a scientist, but a clown.
Did you yourself understand what you said?!
Science doesnt go by “belief”. What you want is religion. Stop mixing science with religion!!
It’s time all special issues of all journals and all publishers get stopped for good. There is no reason to invite rookie (or even worse, malicious) editors to do the job of an expert.
Special issues were initially designed to boost the IF of journals: articles focusing on a single topic and invited articles are allegedly more often read (and cited) than regular articles. However, these “special issues” progressively converted into “specially bad issues”. It is clear, for example, that in the case of Hindawi, they just represent the bottom of the barrel. If, on the top of that, the barrel is short, the readership evaporates quickly. So yes, special issues is a wrong strategy. I prefer lead articles on sharp topics, written by renowned scientists.
This subject certainly differs between each discipline. I’ve seen some quite good special issues in the social sciences, which tend to capture subjects that are disparately spread across many low IF journals.
I would be very interested to see a perspective on the peer review process across different fields, contrasting STEM and social science fields. Not to make our fields or methods differences butt heads, but I certainly notice a far higher number of retractions in STEM/”hard” sciences.
Perhaps it’s because social sciences suffer from a different, in some ways more pernicious, set of problems. For example, there’s the well known issue of reproducibility. Then there’s what appears to be an increased emphasis on “media friendly” often strained spin on findings. Viral popular references seem to at times be more important than actual academic citations.