Misconduct cases remain unresolved for years in South Korea, data show 

The National Research Foundation of Korea in Daejeon.

Misconduct inquiries in South Korea meant to be completed within months are taking years instead, according to data from the country’s primary agency for academic research. 

Of the 83 misconduct cases the National Research Foundation has overseen since 2021, 49, including some still open, failed to reach a decision within the six-month deadline set by the Ministry of Education. Twenty two cases were open for longer than a year, and some had not progressed beyond the preliminary stages. 

The foundation also wasn’t able to ascertain basic information for many cases. In more than half of all the cases, the agency couldn’t confirm when the preliminary inquiry began or ended. The politician who obtained the figures says the deadline has become meaningless and is calling for better oversight.

Continue reading Misconduct cases remain unresolved for years in South Korea, data show 

A year after plagiarism allegations and author’s retraction request, Elsevier is still investigating

At a glance, the papers look completely different: One, published in 2023, describes forest co-management in Bangladesh. The other, published last year, is about soil conservation in China. But an author on the older paper could tell something was amiss.

“Once I read it and saw the figures and methods were very similar with just a change in location and context, alarm bells rang,” agricultural researcher Lisa Lobry de Bruyn, of the University of New England, in New South Wales, Australia, told Retraction Watch.

The October 2025 article in Land Use Policy cited the earlier paper, published in Forest Policy and Economics and coauthored by de Bruyn and then-Ph.D. student Flora Begum. But some areas were “remarkably” similar, “such as methods and data presentation with artful alteration of axis and repositioning of themes,” de Bruyn wrote in a Dec. 2 email to editors at both journals. “But for the most part I cannot see how it could be that similar, coming to the same conclusions and same weightings of themes,” she said, calling the situation “distressing.” 

Continue reading A year after plagiarism allegations and author’s retraction request, Elsevier is still investigating

Diabetes association VP resigns over response to editorial boycott following protest at annual meeting

The top publishing executive at the American Diabetes Association has resigned over how the organization has handled an editorial boycott at one of its journals following a protest at its annual meeting earlier this year. 

Christian Kohler, vice president for professional publications, submitted his resignation on Nov. 6, “after considerable reflection and with profound disappointment in ADA’s handling of the events of June 5 in New Orleans, its subsequent responses to and justifications for those events, and its continued failure to articulate a credible path toward resolving the resulting crisis of confidence within the diabetes research community.”

Kohler has been with ADA for more than 20 years, according to his LinkedIn profile, and in his current role since 2022. 

Continue reading Diabetes association VP resigns over response to editorial boycott following protest at annual meeting

Weekend reads: Francesca Gino’s claims against Harvard dismissed; a brief history of scientific sleuths; China’s controversial trials slow

If your week flew by — we know ours did — catch up here with what you might have missed.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

In case you missed the news, the Hijacked Journal Checker now has more than 450 entries. The Retraction Watch Database has over 68,000 retractions. Our list of COVID-19 retractions is approaching 800, and our mass resignations list has more than 50 entries. We keep tabs on all this and more. If you value this work, please consider showing your support with a tax-deductible donation. Every dollar counts.

I Support Retraction Watch

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Continue reading Weekend reads: Francesca Gino’s claims against Harvard dismissed; a brief history of scientific sleuths; China’s controversial trials slow

U.S. university asks journal to remove professor’s name from paper with coauthor in China

A physics journal has removed a professor’s name from an article at his university’s request, because a coauthor works at a university in China that has been flagged for national security concerns.

“The decision of the journal has been of course to consult the author,” Carlo Rovelli, the editor of Foundations of Physics, a Springer Nature title, told Retraction Watch. “As for the author, it was a problem to challenge his own university.“

The professor, Emanuele Zappala, an applied mathematician at Idaho State University, was the senior author on a paper, “Operational Protocols Cannot Certify Classicality,” that had been accepted for publication. His name is still listed on a preprint posted online last year.

Continue reading U.S. university asks journal to remove professor’s name from paper with coauthor in China

A year later, Springer Nature journal hasn’t updated article with fake reference to our cofounder

Some people might happily take credit for an article in Nature they did not write. That’s not the case when the credited author is a cofounder of Retraction Watch and the attribution comes in a citation to an article that doesn’t exist. 

The reference appeared in a November 2025 paper, published in DARU Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, which criticized post-publication peer review platforms, specifically PubPeer, as vulnerable to “misuse” and “hyper-skepticism.”

Shortly after it was published, the article began to draw attention from users on — where else — PubPeer, where commenters flagged repetitive language, “essentially identical” paragraph structure, and five references that do not appear to exist, three with incorrect DOIs or links, and one with common authors that was retracted last year. 

Continue reading A year later, Springer Nature journal hasn’t updated article with fake reference to our cofounder

Bioengineered retracts 119 more papers as investigation continues

Bioengineered retracted 119 papers in October amid investigations into suspected paper mill activity and other integrity-related concerns at the Taylor & Francis journal.

Clarivate delisted Bioengineered from its Web of Science platform in May 2025, after placing it on hold a year earlier. In July 2025, the publisher suspended new submissions to the journal, which publishes bioengineering and biotechnology research, to focus on the investigations.

Concerns about paper mill activity date back to 2021, when the journal began investigating a spike in submissions and requests to change authorship after submission.

In the 2025 announcement, the publisher said it put an “under investigation” notice on over 1,000 articles. 

Continue reading Bioengineered retracts 119 more papers as investigation continues

Computing journal retracts 13 papers, including four from past EIC

An Elsevier journal on computer applications in biomedicine has retracted 13 papers —  including four by a former editor-in-chief — for suspicious authorship changes and erroneous citations.

The articles were published in Computers in Biology and Medicine from 2019 to 2023. The October 15 retraction notices list suspicious changes in authorship, irrelevant citations to the work of authors and peer reviewers and self-plagiarism as reasons for retraction.

In 10 cases, the notice states, an “impartial field expert acting in the role of an independent Publishing Ethics advisor” requested the retraction. 

Continue reading Computing journal retracts 13 papers, including four from past EIC

Weekend reads: Mega-journal on hold at PubMed; 1,400 retractions in one day; ‘I Used AI to Fake a Scientific Paper’

If your week flew by — we know ours did — catch up here with what you might have missed.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

In case you missed the news, the Hijacked Journal Checker now has more than 450 entries. The Retraction Watch Database has over 68,000 retractions. Our list of COVID-19 retractions is approaching 800, and our mass resignations list has more than 50 entries. We keep tabs on all this and more. If you value this work, please consider showing your support with a tax-deductible donation. Every dollar counts.

I Support Retraction Watch

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Continue reading Weekend reads: Mega-journal on hold at PubMed; 1,400 retractions in one day; ‘I Used AI to Fake a Scientific Paper’

Scientific Reports on hold in PubMed while NLM reevaluates journal

The National Library of Medicine has stopped indexing articles from Scientific Reports in MEDLINE because the journal’s inclusion in the world’s largest biomedical library is under review, Retraction Watch has learned. 

“Following its significant growth in recent years, Scientific Reports is currently being reviewed by the US National Library of Medicine (NLM),” the journal’s chief editor Rafal Marszalek wrote in an Oct. 20 email we have seen. “We have been informed that during this period, indexing of newly published content in MEDLINE and archiving in PubMed Central (PMC) are paused, and will not appear in PubMed.”

Marszalek did not say why NLM is reviewing Scientific Reports, which is the largest journal in PubMed in terms of articles indexed. But according to MEDLINE’s policies page, NLM re-evaluates journals if “there are significant changes to a journal,” noting the library monitors journals “for changes in publication practices, such as annual publication volume or primary article content types.”

Continue reading Scientific Reports on hold in PubMed while NLM reevaluates journal