Seven papers flagged earlier for fake reviews now retracted by Elsevier

Elsevier has now retracted the seven papers it flagged in October as being affected by fake peer reviews.

If you’re not keeping track, we are: We have logged a total of about 300 retractions for fake peer review, in which some aspect of the peer-review process becomes compromised — for instance, in the case of the newly retracted papers, authors appear to have created fake email accounts in order to pose as reviewers and give the green light to their own papers.

The same retraction note applies to five of the recently retracted papers:

This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor and the Publisher.

After a thorough investigation, the Publisher has concluded that the acceptance of this article was based upon the positive advice of at least one faked reviewer report. The report was submitted from a fictitious email account which was provided to the journal as a suggested reviewer by the corresponding author during the submission of the paper.

This manipulation of the peer-review process represents a clear violation of the fundamentals of peer review, our publishing policies, and publishing ethics standards. Apologies are offered to the reviewers whose identities were assumed and to the readers of the journal that this deception was not detected during the submission process.

That note is now affixed to:

• The synergistic effect between beta-amyloid(1-42) and alpha-synuclein on the synapses dysfunction in hippocampal neurons, published in the Journal of Chemical Neuroanatomy and cited three times (once by the retraction note).
• Predictive and prognostic value of ER-α36 expression in breast cancer patients treated with chemotherapy, published in Steroids and cited seven times (once by the retraction note)
• Protein–protein interaction and SNP analysis in intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasm, published in Gene and cited four times (once by the retraction note)
• Microarray analysis of microRNA expression in liver cancer tissues and normal control, also published in Gene and cited 11 times (once by the retraction note)
• Candidate agents for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma identified by a sub-pathway based method, also published in Gene, and cited once (by the retraction note)

One affected paper was in press — “Association of TNF-α-308G>A polymorphisms with hepatocellular carcinoma in Han Chinese population: A systematic review and meta-analysis” — and was withdrawn with this notice:

The Editor and Publisher of “Clinics and Research in Hepatology and Gastroenterology” have decided to withdraw this article because they consider that it has been accepted based upon the positive advice of at least one faked reviewer report. This manipulation of the peer-review process represents a clear violation of the fundamentals of peer review, our publishing policies, and publishing ethics standards.

And another, “Correlations between peroxisome proliferator activator receptor γ, Cystatin C, or advanced oxidation protein product, and atherosclerosis in diabetes patients” was retracted from Pathology – Research and Practice with this retraction notice:

This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy).

We have tried to reach the corresponding authors on these papers, but have not received any replies.

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