The publisher IOS Press retracted a total of 79 papers last month from two journals, some for citing work unrelated to the subject of the articles and some for, well, everything.
The retraction notice in one of the titles, the Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems reads:
The Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems retract a total of 49 articles from the journal’s online catalogue. The articles were published in different issues of the journal in the period July 2019 –April 2021. After publication it was found that these articles cite literature sources that have no relation to the subject matter of the citing article. This could be the result of a deliberate attempt to engineer the citation performance of the scientific literature. All authors were asked to provide insight into the reasoning for citing unrelated articles but were either unresponsive or unable to provide a reasonable explanation for having done so. It was decided to remove these articles from the published literature completely. This retraction is carried out in accordance with the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
While the notice refers to 49 articles, PubPeer commenter “Rhipidura Albiventris” notes that number 4 on the list duplicates number 3, so there are 48.
Separately, as Elisabeth Bik notes, IOS Press has retracted 31 articles from the journal Work:
The Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of the journal WORK retract all pre-press (ahead of print) articles related to a special issue entitled “Health Risk Assessment”. The retraction is carried out in accordance with the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). After a thorough investigation, several ethical issues were discovered, in particular related to the content, authorship, quality and scope, which make the articles unsuitable for publication in WORK.
This retraction note is applicable to the below articles. These articles have appeared briefly (for approximately one month) in the pre-press section of the journal. The publisher has removed the articles from this section completely.
The first article on the list, as PubPeer commenter Hoya Camphorifolia notes, is by Grajkowsk Wisława, the editor of the special issue and a member of the journal’s editorial board.
Guillaume Cabanac, a sleuth who has found problems in hundreds of papers, wondered in a PubPeer comment why the Rhipidura Albiventris and other sleuths in the Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems case — who have been posting on PubPeer about problems with these papers since at least January — weren’t credited in the notice:
This retraction notice does not cite pro bono work contributed to PubPeer the past few weeks.
IOS Press might have discovered the flaws in their 48 papers based on an internal audit of their output. The statement “it was found that these articles…” does not inform readers on the error identification process. The retraction notice would be more informative if it clarified this point.
Had IOS Press used PubPeer as source for tips (reporting errors in their papers) from several informants, I believe they should have cited PubPeer posts as primary sources of evidence (re the “cite your sources” requirement in scientific work).
While some journals have begun to include credit to sleuths in their retraction notices, it is still relatively uncommon.
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There’s some strange things with this Grajkowsk Wisława. Maybe some Poles can confirm, but as far as I know Wisława is a female (first) name, in which case the last name should be “Grajkowska”.
Moreover, the e-mail given in one of the retracted “Works” articles is “grajkowskaw at ust.edu.pl”, while the affiliation supposedly is “Department of Pathology, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology”. But the ust.edu.pl address actually refers to a “Union of Science and Technology of Poland”, which apparently publishes conference proceedings. Moreover, I don’t think there is a Department of Pathology at the Wroclaw University of Science and Technology – it is a technical university that does not seem to do any medical research.
And then the kicker: there is a Grajkowska Wiesława (or Wiesława Grajkowska in the Western convention of first name, last name) who works at the Department of Pathology at the Children’s Memorial Health Institute in Warsaw.
“Grajkowsk Wisława” also appears as a Guest Editor on a Special Issue on “Biomedical Applications of Nanotechnology”.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33183410/
The journal in that case was J Nanoscience & Nanotechnology, published by Am Sci Pub, who may not care whether the included papers are genuine.
Another retracted “Work” paper was “Health risk appraisal of rural population in poverty”, nominally written by Le Kang and Rodrigues Marlene – the latter being affiliated to College of Fine, Performing & Communication Arts, Wayne State University (MI), although preferring a gmail account for correspondence.
https://pubpeer.com/publications/5583C8A468F9848F55EDAB6603BAAE
The implausible but versatile “Rodrigues Marlene” also co-authored “TRAJECTORY SIMULATION OF BADMINTON ROBOT BASED ON FRACTAL BROWN MOTION”,
https://pubpeer.com/publications/84AF569CEA089749EA28206BCB7C56
This appeared in yet another Special Issue in yet another journal: “Fractal and Fractional with Applications to Nature”, in “Fractals”, published by World Scientific.
https://www.worldscientific.com/toc/fractals/28/08
The rest of that Special Issue contains no end of low-hanging fruit. The editors (and authors of many papers) were Abdon Atangana, Emile Franc Goufo Ndongmo, José Francisco Gómez Aguilar, Muhammad Altaf Khan and Ilknur Koca. Some of those names may be familiar to RW readers.
In the same way commenter Marco had noted something odd about the name “Grajkowsk Wisława”, I also noted that “Rodrigues” is a common last name in latin countries, but I’ve never heard it being used as a first name. Conversely, “Marlene” is a common first name (at least in Brazil, where I live). Again, I’m yet to see someone using “Marlene” as a last name. So “Marlene Rodrigues” would be much more recognizable than “Rodrigues Marlene”.
Perhaps worth noting that Daming Li is author of one retracted paper, and many more questioned ones:
https://pubpeer.com/publications/F156F47CD3BA48EE0C0C3CC8ED78B0
https://pubpeer.com/search?q=%22Daming+Li%22+OR+%22Li+Daming%22
Also appeared in an earlier RW story.
http://retractionwatch.com/2021/02/01/journal-pulls-two-studies-that-listed-an-author-without-his-permission/