The Canadian Center of Science and Education has put out a truly useless retraction for a paper published in June 2010 in their journal English Language Teaching.
Here’s the notice for “A Solution to Plato’s Problem: Faculty of Language as A Complex Non-Linear System”:
The editorial board announced this article has been retracted on August 18, 2010.
If you have any further question, please contact us at: [email protected]
So we tried that email. We had a very odd back and forth with editorial assistant Gavin Yu, who responded to a request for more details with the following:
The author has retracted the article in 2010, I am sorry that there is a mistake in the announcement, the date should be August 18, 2010.
We’ve pointed out that there was no mistake, since he was just confirming what the notice said, and asked for details that would bring the journal into line with the retraction guidelines published by the Committee for Publication Ethics. We also reached out to the author, and will report back if we find out more.
In the meantime, we’re hanging tight in Plato’s Cave.
Hat tip: Rolf Degen.
This publisher (along with its three other imprints, RedFame Publishing, Sciedu Press and Macrothink Institute) have been on my list for a long time. It is basically a one-man operation, and I strongly recommend that scholars not submit papers to its many journals. The poor communication experience and the lack of adherence to established scholarly publishing standards are merely the tip of the iceberg in terms of this publisher’s many significantweaknesses.
In terms of not following established standards, just take a look at these two ‘retractions’:
http://www.ijerst.com/previousissue.php?year=2012&issue=1
http://www.ijerst.com/previousissue.php?year=2014&issue=2
“paper has been deleted…”
http://www.ijerst.com/ijerstadmin/upload/IJEETC_53dfc74803b07.pdf
http://www.ijerst.com/ijerstadmin/upload/IJEETC_53dfc6f90de02.pdf
“…to plagiarism”
In my study of linguistics and philosophy, one word seems to cover much scholarly publishing
and other “high level” activity:
OBFUSCATION
Essentially, “This paper has been retracted because reasons.”
But was it really in 2010 (then why showing here only now) or was it in practice retracted just yesterday, which would make more temporal sense?
The PDF file with the retraction notice is dated August 9, 2014. I’m sure they meant to say “this article will have been retracted on August 18, 2010”.
When I complained to the editor that two papers, published in a CCSE journal, did not have novel content, the editor (with academic affiliation in Spain) disclaimed all knowledge of the reviewing procedure. The CCSE functionary (in Canada, but operating on Chinese time) I contacted asked me to send a Letter to the Editor for publication, but refused to tell me the name of the Associate Editor who supposedly shepherded the review processes.