Cancer researcher with nine retractions says he’ll take publisher to court

A cancer researcher who lost nine papers in one day as a publisher purged articles offered in “authorship-for-sale” schemes told Retraction Watch he and his co-authors “will soon defend ourselves legally.” 

Last month, the publisher Frontiers announced it had retracted 38 papers after its research integrity team found links to the practice of buying and selling authorship positions. Brokers list advertisements for authorships of scientific papers on dedicated websites as well as social media.  

Nine of the 38 articles Frontiers retracted listed Mostafa Jarahian, formerly of the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg, as a co-author. 

When we initially reported on the large batch of retractions, one of Jarahian’s co-authors shared an article from Frontiers  indicating the publisher had decided to retract the paper after “concerns were brought to our attention from the German Cancer Research Center regarding the authorship of the article.” 

A draft retraction notice included in the email said: 

the German Cancer Research Center contacted the editorial office stating that the author Mostafa Jarahian is not an employee. 

We reached out to Jarahian at the time, but didn’t hear back until recently. He shared with us an email from Martin R. Berger, who had led the DKFZ’s Toxicology and Chemotherapy research group with Jarahian as a member, to Frontiers. Berger confirmed to us that he sent the email, which disputed the publisher’s reasons for retracting Jarahian’s articles. 

Berger wrote that Jarahian had been a member of the DKFZ since 2001, and part of Berger’s department from 2017 until leaving in 2020. All nine retracted papers were submitted in 2021, according to the articles’ webpages, and published either that year or in 2022. Berger wrote: 

As I understand the situation, the only allegation, which is correct, is that the article(s) under concern was (were) labelled with his old affiliation. On the other hand, there is some period after leaving an institution, during which it is normal to use the old affiliation, as the work originated and was carried out there. In addition, during the period in question, Dr. Jarahian did not have a new position / new employer. In this situation, he used his private email address, which clearly differs from official DKFZ email addresses.

Finally, the science of the article(s) is not being disputed. In addition, the co-authors have not been involved in any accusation regarding science integrity. Therefore, it does not seem appropriate, to harm all authors because of a minor mistake of one author. If you deem it necessary to establish justice in this regard, I suggest that you allow Dr. Jarahian to write a short erratum.

If you can follow this suggestion, you would solve the underlying problem with distinction and grace and avoid the punishment of many co-authors. In the case, in which a PhD is pending on a publication, this would seem clearly unfair and exaggerated.

Berger told us he had not received any response from Frontiers, which he said was “sad as well as a nuisance.” 

Jarahian said he and his co-authors had not taken legal action yet, “but we intend to do it.” He did not respond further when we asked him to comment on Frontiers’ finding that his retracted papers had author positions posted for sale. 

A Frontiers spokesperson told us the publisher was “confident in our decision” and had “received no indication of legal action by Mostafa Jarahian against Frontiers to date.” The spokesperson said: 

The retraction decision was a result of a thorough investigation by the Frontiers’ Research Integrity team. The concerns over ‘authorship for sale’ were flagged via Pubpeer, a valuable source of community feedback, of the adverts for several of Dr Jarahian’s publications (here and here). Similar concerns of authorship abnormalities were highlighted in articles published by the same author group elsewhere (for example, see here and here).  

Following the direct discussions with the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), the institution confirmed that  

• Dr Jarahian was no longer an employee (the tenure finished in February 2020)  
• DKFZ was not aware of any of the 9 articles, all of which were submitted and published in 2021. 

We shared the details of our investigation with the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). The Committee subsequently confirmed that Frontiers had followed adequate processes consistent with COPE expectations to assess the concerns and correct the published record.

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