Elsevier retracts papers when it realizes one of the authors hid fact he was guest editor of issue

A researcher who guest edited an issue has lost two papers after a journal’s publisher discovered that he had changed his name on the manuscripts following submission.

The retraction notices in Computers in Industry, an Elsevier title, for “Evaluation of the green supply chain management practices: A novel neutrosophic approach” and “An integrated neutrosophic ANP and VIKOR method for achieving sustainable supplier selection: A case study in importing field” read the same way:

This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief as the reliability of the peer-review process of the article cannot be guaranteed.

It was discovered post publication that the Managing Guest Editor of the Special Issue, M. Abdel-Baset, was also an author of the article: the version of the paper which was accepted by the handling Editor used the author name ‘M. Metwalli’, but the corresponding author was subsequently changed to “M. Abdel-Baset”.

As such this represents an abuse of the scientific publishing system. The scientific community takes a very strong view on this matter and apologies are offered to readers of the journal that this was not detected during the submission process.

Abdel-Baset, whose affiliation is listed as Zagazig University in Egypt’s Faculty of Computers and Informatics, did not respond to requests for comment, nor did Nick Szirbik, the journal’s editorial manager for special issues.

It’s therefore unclear why Abdel-Baset changed his name on the manuscript, nor why the retraction came three years after the papers were published in 2019. Such post-acceptance changes are one way that individual authors and paper mills manipulate the publishing process to fool editors.

A Mohamed Abdel-Basset – note the extra “s” – also then of Zagazig’s Faculty of Computers and Informatics has had three papers retracted for faked peer review. A fourth retraction was for the same reason as the two newly retracted articles:

…the Managing Guest Editor of the Special Issue, Gunasekaran Manogaran, was also an author of the article: the version of the paper which was accepted by the Editor-in-Chief used the author name ‘M. Gunasekaran’, but the author was subsequently changed to ‘Gunasekaran Manogaran’.

All four of those retractions were also in Elsevier journals.

Florentin Smarandache, a co-author on one of the newly retracted papers, said he only knew Abdel-Baset by email. Smarandache, who took emeritus status at the University of New Mexico this year, said there had been an exchange of emails between all of the authors and the journal, but that he could not provide it because he regularly deletes his Gmails to avoid being charged storage fees.

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