Expert Opinion on Therapeutic Patents has retracted a 2015 review article about natural fighters of cancer stem cells for reproducing “content to a high degree of similarity without appropriate attribution or acknowledgement” from a handful of papers.
Although the editor and publisher pulled the paper, they did so with the cooperation of the authors, according to the retraction note:
The authors have been fully co-operative with our investigations and agree with the Editor and Publisher on this course of action to correct the redundancy in the literature record.
The paper, “Natural product-based therapeutics for the treatment of cancer stem cells: a patent review (2010 – 2013)“, looked at alternatives of chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and other drugs for the stubborn subpopulation of cancer cells that can persist and seed new tumors. The main source of the findings was international patents for these products.
Apparently the paper sourced from other academic papers, as well — a little too heavily. The retraction note lists the papers that the article reproduces material from:
The Editor and Publisher regret to announce the following article published in 2015 has been retracted from publication in Expert Opinion on Therapeutic Patents:
Lee CH, Chen CY. Natural product-based therapeutics for the treatment of cancer stem cells: a patent review (2010 – 2013). Expert Opin Ther Pat 2015 Mar 4: 1-11, 2015 (doi:10.1517/13543776.2015.1021688)
This article has been found to reproduce content to a high degree of similarity without appropriate attribution or acknowledgement by the authors from the following sources.
Yapeng Hu and Liwu Fu. Targeting cancer stem cells: a new therapy to cure cancer patients. Am J Cancer Res. 2012; 2(3): 340–356.
Cord Naujokat and Stefan Laufer. Role of Cancer Stem Cells in Cancer Biology and Therapy. Edited by Kurt S . Za¨nker. CRC Press 2013, 227–256. DOI: 10.1201/b15734-10
Efferth T. Stem Cells, Cancer Stem-Like Cells, and Natural Products. Planta Med 2012; 78(10): 935-942. DOI: 10.1055/s-0031-1298540
Morrison R, Schleicher SM, Sun Y, et al. Targeting the Mechanisms of Resistance to Chemotherapy and Radiotherapy with the Cancer Stem Cell Hypothesis. Volume 2011 (2011), Article ID 941876, 13 pages. doi:10.1155/2011/941876
Burnett J, Newman B, Sun D. Targeting Cancer Stem Cells with Natural Products. Curr Drug Targets. 13(8): 1054-1064 (11). DOI: 10.2174/138945012802009062
Individual matches without overlap have been found between sections in the above papers and the paper from Expert Opinion on Therapeutic Patents including the use of figure 2 without permission.
The authors have been fully co-operative with our investigations and agree with the Editor and Publisher on this course of action to correct the redundancy in the literature record.
The journal’s policy in this respect is clear: Expert Opinion on Therapeutic Patents considers all manuscripts on the strict condition that they have been submitted only to Expert Opinion on Therapeutic Patents, that they have not been published already, nor are they under consideration for publication or in press elsewhere.
Expert Opinion on Therapeutic Patents published this article in good faith, and on the basis of signed statements made by the corresponding author regarding the originality of their work. The article is withdrawn from all print and electronic editions.
The note is signed by Claudiu T Supuran, the Editor in Chief, and Elizabeth Knowles, Publisher at Informa Healthcare.
Supuran provided us with some more background:
…after the paper was online (asap publication) a German author wrote to me and the commissioning editor that there were plagiarism problems… [The authors] did not want to write the retraction…[so] as per Informa practice, I as an editor in chief and the commissioning editor (who in fact commissioned the ms) did it.
We’ve also contacted corresponding author Chung-Yi Chen, a researcher at Fooyin University in Taiwan, for comment. We’ll update this post if we hear back.
The paper has been cited 0 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
Hat tip: Rolf Degen
Like Retraction Watch? Consider supporting our growth. You can also follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, add us to your RSS reader, and sign up on our homepage for an email every time there’s a new post. Click here to review our Comments Policy.