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The week at Retraction Watch featured:
- COVID-19-vitamin D paper retracted by Springer Nature journal
- Study on reducing parents’ anxiety about children’s circumcision retracted
- More than 300 at once: Publisher retracts entire conference proceedings
- What we’ve learned from public records requests. Please help us file more.
- Authors blame ‘unintentional oversight’ for including image of deceased patient in paper
- 8 years after three papers are flagged — and after losing original correspondence — PLOS ONE retracts
Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 221. There are more than 33,000 retractions in our database — which powers retraction alerts in EndNote, LibKey, Papers, and Zotero. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers?
Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):
- “Should peer reviewers be paid to review academic papers?” Earlier: “I do peer review and I want you to pay me four hundred and fifty dollars.”
- “What Kim Kardashian teaches us about conflicts of interest ignored during the pandemic.”
- “The QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute has given up $3.4 million in grants as it continues to count the cost of a scandal involving Professor Mark Smyth.”
- “The moral panic over the impact of so-called predatory publishers continues unabated.”
- “A new nonprofit wants to rewrite the playbook for how the U.S. government funds science.”
- “While preprints accelerate dissemination of findings, their increased use could challenge strategies for risk mitigation at the publication stage.”
- “For US tenure to survive, academics must take peer reviewing seriously.”
- “Former graduate student voices concerns for misconduct in bioengineering research lab.”
- “A descriptive study of a prolific papermill that combines crystallography and medicine.”
- “Unethical studies of ivermectin for covid-19.”
- “Kashmir University PhD scholar arrested for ‘highly provocative and seditious’ magazine article.”
- “Maintaining Academic Integrity of our Journal.”
- “Scientists Question Data Behind an Experimental Alzheimer’s Drug.”
- “UA Little Rock officials being investigated after research misconduct allegations are made.” And part two.
- “Honesty is a core scientific virtue, but what does it require of us?”
- “Scientific publication speed and retractions of COVID-19 pandemic original articles.”
- “UK Funding Agency Apologizes for Role in Researchfish Controversy.”
- “Punished for plagiarism, Dhaka University teacher Samia seeks early retirement.”
- “The Madras high court has dismissed a peculiar plea moved by a professor challenging his own appointment as member of the screening-cum-evaluation and selection committee…”
- The “authorship disparity chasm” persists at top medical journals.
- Why one researcher says every lab should include contrarians.
- “When You’re a Victim of Academic Plagiarism: This is how it really feels.” And a take from a decade ago.
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“The moral panic over the impact of so-called predatory publishers continues unabated.”
The author argues that criticism of predatory / parasitical publishers is a Bad Thing because
(1) ‘Legitimate’ publishers are really no better, having adopted many of the strategies of predatory ones as part of the OA paradigm; and
(2) As collateral damage, it injures the OA paradigm.