23 becomes 22: Publisher retracts retraction, apologizes for the error

A publisher that retracted nearly two dozen papers earlier this month for plagiarism and other problems has retracted one of the retractions, apologizing to the authors for its error.

All of the 23 — now 22 — retracted papers had either Jesus Silva or Amelec Viloria as one of the authors, but Silva and Viloria turn out to be the same person, according to the publisher, IOP Publishing. Viloria is last author of the now unretracted paper, “Energy potential of vinasse derived from rum manufacturing,” from IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering.

The first author of that paper, Carmen Vásquez, of Universidad Nacional Experimental Politécnica Antonio José de Sucre in Venezuela, told Retraction Watch by email (we used Google Translate to translate from Spanish to English) that she had contacted the publisher when the retractions appeared to let them know that her paper did not plagiarize:

Anyone, without being a specialist in the area, would realize that they are not similar to us. However, I sent them a table where I show them that the works are not the same, that they are not copies (I included a Turnitin report of the original Spanish version of the article, I contacted the author Aristizábal so that he could indicate if he saw any similarity, I submitted to answer a questionnaire by the editor, … and I have had infinite patience, because until today I have not written to someone other than IOP).

IOP Publishing retracted the retraction today, adding a link to a publisher’s note apologizing to the authors.

But that was too little too late, Vásquez said. One of Colombia’s largest-circulation newspapers, El Espectador, published a list of the authors involved in the incident, including Vásquez, who said “our names were published as if we were criminals of a cartel.”

Kim Eggleton, IOP Publishing’s Research Integrity & Inclusion Manager, tells Retraction Watch:

When discovering misconduct in some of Amelec Viloria / Jesus Silva’s papers, we approached the author for more information on all of the papers within our database that he had co-authored. Viloria admitted plagiarism on all 23 papers in our database. This was also confirmed by his employer, the Universidad de la Costa, in an email to us on 23rd August. As such, this paper was retracted as there was some overlap with the other paper referenced in the retraction, and there was an admission of guilt from Viloria/Silva and his employer.

Following the retractions going live, other co-authors on the paper contacted us with evidence that they were indeed the legitimate authors of the paper, and that only small sections of the paper bore resemblance to another, which was referenced correctly.

We looked into this and agreed that the retraction should be removed, despite the confession from Viloria (we have asked Viloria to explain his contribution to this paper, but received no response). We immediately began the process of correcting the record, and in the meantime issued the co-authors with an apology and official letter for them to use if needed, before the correction went live.

We regret this error and have done our utmost to correct the record as quickly as possible.

We asked whether the publisher was considering moving the publisher’s note, which appears at the bottom of the retraction, to the top, and Eggleton indicated it would like take until Monday to find out. [Update, 1700 UTC, 9/29/20: Eggleton tells us that change has been made on the abstract page and PDF.]

Meanwhile, Vásquez is not happy:

I feel like we have been disrespected from every point of view and our rights trampled on.

Update, 1200 UTC, 9/27/20: Vásquez asked us to add a “not” to this sentence in her quote above, as she had omitted it in her email to us:

Anyone, without being a specialist in the area, would realize that they are [not] similar to us.

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at [email protected].