A tale of (3)2 retraction notices: On publishers, paper mill products, and the sleuths that find them

Should publishers acknowledge the work of sleuths when their work has led to retractions?

We were prompted to pose the question by a recent retraction from International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics of a 2021 paper. The notice reads:

The Editor-in-Chief has retracted this article because it shows evidence of peer review manipulation. In addition, the article shows evidence of authorship manipulation: it appears authorship for this article was offered for sale before the article was submitted to the journal.

The Authors have not responded to any correspondence from the editor about this retraction.

We have no reason to doubt that any of that is true. But the paper was one of several hundred likely paper mill products identified by Brian Perron and colleagues in work published on Retraction Watch last December, using language similar to that in the retraction notice. And the paper was the subject of paper mill contract 721 on a list that Perron et. al. made available soon after that publication.

And yet the Springer Nature retraction notice makes no mention of the work by Perron and colleagues.

Contrast that with a retraction notice about 30 papers published last month by the International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning, or iJET. The editors cited Perron et. al.’s work, and wrote that “we are very thankful for the information provided by Dr. Perron and his team.”

Or with multiple cases over the past several years of retraction notices citing the work of well-known sleuth Elisabeth Bik. Bik pointed out that some of the work she received credit for, in this case from Elsevier journals, was a group effort, including by David Bimler, aka “Smut Clyde.” Bimler is credited in a recent set of nearly 1,000 expressions of concern for crystallography structures used in likely paper mill articles.

So why no mention of Perron and colleagues in the recent retraction notice? The omission means that the journal ignores the fact that Springer Nature’s peer review process missed yet another paper mill paper. And the fact that there were volunteers doing at least some of the work that profitable multibillion-dollar corporations like readers and others to think they’re doing when they charge subscriptions or article processing charges. We asked Chris Graf, head of research integrity at Springer Nature for comment. A spokesperson sent this response on his behalf:

We are dedicated to investigating all concerns around our published content and there is no doubt that sleuths play a huge role in supporting us in doing that.  The complexity and scale of the work that mills are doing to undermine our processes makes it particularly challenging for publishers to identify all cases and specialist academics around the world do a fantastic and important job of supporting the efforts to clean up the literature.

In general we do not put thanks into retraction notes as the specific role of these notes is to update the publication record. However, we are extremely appreciative of all those that give their time and expertise to helping uncover problematic content.  This is particularly the case when individuals contact and work directly with our Research Integrity team, whose focus is addressing these concerns and who can personally thank the sleuths for their contributions.  In this instance I would like to emphasise how grateful we are to Professor Perron for his work. 

We also pointed out that in recent testimony before a U.S. Congressional subcommittee, Graf had responded to a question about how much time and effort investigating fraud can take by referring only to the work of his Springer Nature colleagues – and not mentioning the work of sleuths who often bring that fraud to their attention. He responded:

The response that you refer to from the Congressional hearing was an ad hoc comment (as you may have been able to tell) to provide some context, based on my experience of managing the recent investigations. I would not be able to provide information about how many sleuths there are out there and how much time they spend, as I’m not privy to that information. Had the response been something that was not off the cuff, however, I would of course have wished to reflect on how important these researchers are as a part of the ecosystem that works to preserve the publication record.

Springer Nature, we should note, was not alone in failing to mention the work by Perron and colleagues in a retraction notice about a paper on the team’s list. In a recent notice, Thinking Skills and Creativity, an Elsevier title, retracted the paper that was the subject of contract 1160 on the group’s list:

This article has been retracted at the request of the Editors-in-Chief.

After a thorough investigation, the Editors have concluded that the acceptance of this article was partly based upon the positive advice of one illegitimate reviewer report. The report was submitted from an email account which was provided to the journal as a suggested reviewer during the submission of the article. Although purportedly a real reviewer account, the Editors have concluded that this was not of an appropriate, independent reviewer.

This manipulation of the peer-review process represents a clear violation of the fundamentals of peer review, our publishing policies, and publishing ethics standards. Apologies are offered to the reviewer whose identity was assumed and to the readers of the journal that this deception was not detected during the submission process.

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