A journal has retracted an abstract after discovering the author didn’t submit it — and also because it appears “highly similar” to a previous publication in Chinese.
The abstract was presented at the 2nd International Conference on Biomedicine and Pharmaceutics in 2014, and lists Qing Guo as the sole author, based Wuhan, China at the China University of Geosciences.
According to the retraction notice, published in the Journal of Investigative Medicine last December, the organizer of the conference discovered Guo hadn’t consented to publish the abstract — moreover, it appeared to overlap with another article in Chinese, written by different authors:
The organizer of the 2nd International Conference on Biomedicine and Pharmaceutics has discovered that the abstract titled “Discussion and Research on Provincial Difference in Rural Finance in China under the Perspective of Financial Geography” (Journal of Investigative Medicine 2014;62(Suppl 1):S71) was submitted and published without the knowledge or consent of the individual listed as the author. It was subsequently discovered that the content of the abstract is highly similar to a previously published article by a different author group (“The Provincial Difference of Rural Finance Development from the View of Financial Geography.” The Theory and Practice of Finance and Economics. 2013;34(5):15–19). As the named author of the abstract was not aware of the publication and in light of the apparent overlap with an existing publication, the journal wishes to retract the abstract.
The 2014 abstract has only been cited by its retraction, according to Thomson Reuters Web of Science.
It’s not clear how or why the abstract was submitted without the original author’s consent. It’s also not the first time a meeting abstract was published without the author’s okay — earlier this year, we reported on another case from a cardiovascular conference (which the authors didn’t end up attending), and another from 2012 when the authors didn’t realize their abstract would be automatically published by a journal following the meeting.
We couldn’t find any contact information for Guo or for the authors of “The Provincial Difference of Rural Finance Development from the View of Financial Geography.”
We reached out to the journal, and will update this post with any new information.
Hat tip: Rolf Degen
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How is a paper entitled “Discussion and Research on Provincial Difference in Rural Finance in China under the Perspective of Financial Geography” relevant to a journal entitled “Journal of Investigative Medicine”?
Great point. It appears that the entire supplement is comprised largely of abstracts with a negligible bearing on translational medicine (e.g. “A short-term forecasting model of taxi taking probability and waiting time in VANET,” “Building of a chattel mortgage information platform based on internet of things,” or even the first abstract in the issue, “Research on the pretreatment of rape straw to reduce the production of bioethanol energy”). Was the supplement itself submitted without the editor’s consent?