Although it shocks some observers every time, we’ve reported on the retractions of more than 100 papers pulled because authors managed to do their own peer review.
Apparently, it’s happened again.
Here’s a retraction notice in BMC Systems Biology for “Predicting new molecular targets for rhein using network pharmacology,” by Aihua Zhang, Hui Sun, Bo Yang and Xijun Wang:
The Editors regretfully retract the article [1] as we believe the peer-review process was compromised and inappropriately influenced by the authors. Following further post-publication peer review the Editors no longer have confidence in the soundness of the findings. We apologise to all affected parties for the inconvenience caused.
BioMed Central tells Retraction Watch that they could not provide more details, but said no other papers seemed to be affected. We’ve asked corresponding author Wang for comment, and will update with anything we learn.
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Hello, why did you mention 100 cases? Do you think that’s a pratice quite common?
Hervé
Unclear how common it is, but we’ve seen 100 retractions for that reason — which is roughly 5% of the retractions in the last four years.