Three authors have been banned from journals published by IGM Publication, including the Journal of Medical Science and Clinical Research.
The ban — a relatively infrequent occurrence in publishing — comes after the publisher removed a 2014 article that seems to have merely changed the title and authors of a 2013 article from another journal.
When a tip from a reader pointed to the possibility of duplication between the two articles, we went on a hunt through JMSCR, but the article had already been removed. A Google Scholar search revealed an html version to “”Dexmedetomidine and Postoperative Shivering, A Randomized Placebo Control Study,” with Manoj Kumar as the sole author, although the original link (now dead-ended) seemed to indicate Manoj Kuma, Rakesh Bahadur Singh and Shilpi Agrawal as the original authors.
We then compared the Kumar version to the supposedly original 2013 version, published in the International Journal of Medical Sciences. We found that the abstract, body and references appear virtually identical.
We emailed JMSCR’s editor, Richa Chobey, for more information. Chobey responded:
we have remove Dr Manoj Article from our Journal, this article has been index with Google/Google scholar so take some time for clear history.
we have remove all data from our Journal.
Sorry for inconvenience
We asked a follow-up: Was the article removed for plagiarism?
Due to our editor mistake, we have select Dr Manoj article but after that we have take action against Dr Manoj et al and remove his article from our journal.
So we asked another follow-up: Have you contacted his institution about an apparent duplication of other work?
we have send a letter to his Institution head and request for take action against Authors.
Er…. Authors???
Yes Authors means (Dr Kumar, and Dr Singh and Agrawal) include all three names and Our Publication house also decided we will not publish any articles of Dr Kumar, and Dr Singh and Agrawal in our Journals.
Although Dr. Chobey did not use the word “ban” in his reply, a refusal to publish an author has the same effect.
The “institution” referenced looks to be the Rural Institute of Medical Science and Research (RIMSR) in India; both Manoj Kumar and Rakesh Singh are shown as faculty there, but there is no listing for Shilpi Agrawal.
IGM Publisher, an open access publisher, is on Jeffrey Beall’s list of predatory publishers. The JMSCR is not listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals.
We have emailed RIMSR and Kumar asking for further information. We couldn’t find any contact information for Rakesh Singh or Shilpi Agrawal. We will give an update as soon as we hear more.
Last month, Taylor & Francis banned a biologist from submitting to their journals following frequent correspondence and “inflammatory language.”
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Interesting. Today the same author (Hung-Chuan Pan) had 2 retractions in the Journal of Neurosurgery but they haven’t banned him. Looked into the reasons, plagiarizing his own paper which is also been retracted because of plagiarism (plagiarism inception [?])
Retraction 1: http://thejns.org/doi/full/10.3171/2015.7.JNS111580r
Retraction 2: http://thejns.org/doi/full/10.3171/2015.7.JNS09850r
The second paper has 67 citations per Google Scholar.
It’s not correct being clustered together with the likes of Manoj Kumar. It’s as if valid complaints – even if frequent or verbose – against commercial publishers that exploit us are equivalent to academic misconduct. The fact that standing up to editorial bias, corruption and publisher incompetence is somehow placed into the same category as plagiarism, says volumes about the publishing industry, and how it views us, i.e., as expendables.