After ten years of being in limbo, a chemistry paper is retracted

In May of this year, François-Xavier Coudert, a chemist at PSL University in Paris, had a question about a paper in Chemistry: A European Journal.

This @ChemEurJ paper has been “early view” (a.k.a. “ASAP”) for 10 years now, online but not published in any issue. How can that even happen?? @Wiley_Chemistry pic.twitter.com/OE3fj1sakp

— FX Coudert (@fxcoudert) May 19, 2019

Several days later, he had an answer — sort of — along with an apology for readers from Haymo Ross, the journal’s editor in chief.

Here is a longer statement from our Editor-in-Chief regarding papers in Early View. pic.twitter.com/SUlirWmiVe

— Chemistry (@ChemEurJ) May 23, 2019

It turns out that there were five papers held in limbo by Chemistry, Ross told Retraction Watch last week. And three months after the editors’ statement, the world had a better answer to what happened to at least one of the papers: It has been retracted.

Here’s the notice for “Unstable Supramolecular Structure of [Bmim][BF4] in Aqueous Solution,” a paper first published in 2009 and retracted in August 2019:

The following article from Chemistry—A European Journal, Unstable Supramolecular Structure of [Bmim][BF4] in Aqueous Solution, by Bo Wu, Li Zhang, Yu Mei Zhang, and Hua Ping Wang, Chem. Eur. J. 2019, 25, 11167–11171, published online on 22 September 2009 and available in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), has been retracted by agreement between the authors, the journal Editor‐in‐Chief Dr. Haymo Ross, and Wiley‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co KGaA.

The retraction has been agreed due to a major overlap in content including text passages and a graphic from the following papers:

T. B. Liu, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2002, 124, 10942–10943

T. B. Liu, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2003, 125, 312–313

T. B. Liu, E. Diemann, H. L. Li, A. W. M. Dress, A. Müller, Nature 2003, 426, 59–62

G. Liu, T. B. Liu, S. S. Mal, U. Kortz, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2006, 128, 10103–10110

G. Liu, T. B. Liu, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2005, 127, 6942–6943

The paper does not seem to have ever been indexed by Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science, but Google Scholar lists 10 papers which have cited it.

Ross said the five cases are now all resolved:

In the example you pointed out, one such paper has been retracted, this was due to the article itself and not the length of time in [Early View]. We have worked on each case with the authors individually and all are now resolved. We do acknowledge and apologize for this oversight. These are very unique cases and not a reflection of the editorial process at Chemistry – A European Journal.

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