‘Unethical and misleading’: Researcher finds his name on editorial boards of journals he’s never heard of

On July 21, Derek Woollins received an email asking that an article be withdrawn from a journal he supposedly helped edit. 

But although Woollins was listed on the journal’s website as a member of its editorial board, he had never even heard of the publication. 

Woollins, a professor of synthetic chemistry at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, later learned that he is also listed on the editorial board of other journals from the same publisher –  Scholars Research Library – again, with no involvement in any of them. (Some academics have even found themselves listed as editors in chief of journals they have nothing to do with.)

Woollins told us: 

This publisher is behaving in an unethical and misleading way.. sadly if this is how the editorial board is convened it seems unlikely that the published articles can be properly peer reviewed.

The article Woollins was contacted about, “The Effect of Aromatherapy with the Essential Oil of Orange on Pain and Vital Signs of Patients with Fractured Limbs Admitted to the Emergency Ward: A Randomized Clinical Trial,” was published in Der Pharma Chemica in 2017. 

It was also published the same year with slightly different wording in the Central European Journal of Nursing and Midwifery (CEJNW) and the Indian Journal of Palliative Care. The latter version has been cited 13 times, while the other versions are not indexed in Clarivate’s Web of Science. No version of the article has yet been retracted.

The email Woollins received was from Darja Jarosova, Editor in Chief of CEJNW, informing him of the duplicate publications. In response, Woolins forwarded the email to the journal’s publisher, adding: 

I have never given my permission for you to make me editor of this journal. This is damaging my academic reputation. Using my name as editor without permission is surely totally inappropriate and illegal. I will seek legal advice.

Woollins told us he had never heard of Der Pharma Chemica before Jarosova’s email. 

In a further exchange, Jarosova told Woollins that his name was also listed on the editorial board of several other journals by the same publisher, including Archives of Applied Science Research, the Journal of Natural Product and Plant Resources, the European Journal of Applied Engineering and Scientific Research, and the Central European Journal of Experimental Biology. Woollins doesn’t edit any of those titles. 

Woollins said Scholars Research Library, based in the United Kingdom, has not yet responded to his email.

Jarosova did not respond to an email from Retraction Watch. In his her email to Woollins, he she wrote: 

The authors have signed a license agreement for this article for our journal CEJNM, where they confirm that the article has not been published anywhere or sent to another journal. Our editors and the publisher (University of Ostrava) consider this behavior of the authors to be a violation of publication ethics, and we suggest withdrawing the article from your journal.

Scholars Research Library did not respond to an email from Retraction Watch.

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