A journal that lost its impact factor and spot in a major index this year has made good on a promise to retract dozens of papers with “compromised” peer review.
Genetika, a publication of the Serbian Genetics Society, did not receive an updated impact factor this year after Clarivate, the company behind the closely-watched but controversial metric, identified signs of citation stacking, a practice in which authors or journals seem to trade citations. Clarivate also dropped Genetika from its Web of Science index for failing to meet editorial quality criteria.
Clarivate’s actions followed a blog post by scientific sleuth Elisabeth Bik about what she called the “Iranian Plant Paper Mill, which included 31 papers published in Genetika.
Snežana Mladenović Drinić, the editor of Genetika, previously told Retraction Watch the journal would retract “papers for which it was determined that the peer review was not done validly.” Jelena Milasin, president of the Serbian Genetics Society, also said Genetika had offered to retract 32 “suspicious papers” published in 2021 and 2022, in the hopes of salvaging their standing with Clarivate.
In its latest issue, Genetika published a notice retracting 31 articles and a corrigendum “due to evidence indicating that the peer review of this paper was compromised, using of frauted [sic] data, high number of unfitting citation, overoll [sic] general misconduct related to professional codes of ethics.”
The list largely overlaps with Bik’s, and includes five papers for which Clarivate had provided “evidence of inappropriate manipulation of citations.”
The authors and reviewers of the retracted papers, as well as “authors who misused the papers published in Genetika by citing them unjustifiably” will be blacklisted from publishing in the journal in the future, according to the notice. It stated:
We would like to apologize [sic] authors, readers and all scientific community that we are having to make those retractions, and we will take all necessary steps to ensure our editorial and peer review processes keep pace with the evolving threat and advancements in scientific fraud.
Drinić and Milasin have not responded to our request for comment.
The five papers with manipulated citations all included M. Khayatnezhad as a coauthor. Khayatnezhad previously held a position in the environmental science and engineering department at the Islamic Azad University’s Ardabil branch in Iran, and also was managing editor of the university’s journal Anthropogenic Pollution. The journal now has a different managing editor, and an email we sent to Khayatnezhad’s university address bounced back. He did not respond to our request for comment sent to another address.
Update, 1600 UTC, 12/13/23: After this article was published, Khayatnezhad responded to our email.
“The claim that the citations are manipulated is very cruel,” he said. “Our mistake was choosing this publication, which made us not notice the things that might be wrong, and now the editor is retracting articles and publishing lies about us in order to correct and justify his mistake.”
He concluded:
“I have no escape from what has happened. And I declare that the weak editor and the Journal caused these incidents. Everyone sends an article, they print it, and this is the result.”
Hat tip: Alexander Magazinov
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Khayatnezhad: Our mistake was choosing this publication, which made us not notice the things that might be wrong …
How this sounds to me is – he had done unethical practice (most probably intentionally), but the journal didn’t helped him to hide it!
Genetika reasoned “… high number of unfitting citation …” for the retraction. If this is true then it was Khayatnezhad’s fault, regardless of in whatever journal he tries to publish.
This is absurd, scientific fraud is dangerous!
Dear all,
It is very good decision taken by the journal Genetika.
Howerver, there are journals who actually do not take any action even after getting sufficient proof of unethical practical including use of fabricated data. I am saying this with my personal experience. I have filed complaint against a research publication with more than sufficient proof indicating the use of fabricated data and other unethical practice by the author. I am following the editorial office since one year but no action has been taken yet. Interestingly, the journal took just one month from submission to publication. The journal was listed in Scopus at the time of publication of the article and now the journal has got impact factor too.
I request you all suggest me what to do for such journal/authors.
Thanks
I will email you with some tips.
Appreciate action taken by Clavirate though it did do it somewhat late. But it is better to be late than never. Unfortunately we are misusing the comfortable access to vast literature and exploiting it to suit our interests. Peer reviewing needs remodelling in the wake of advances in ICT technologies around.