The publisher Sage has retracted 209 articles from an engineering journal after an investigation found “compromised peer review or 3rd party involvement,” according to a company spokesperson.
The retractions, all from the International Journal of Electrical Engineering & Education, stem from an investigation that led Sage to retract 122 papers – as well as fire the editor-in-chief and purge the editorial board – in December 2021.
At that time, the company marked 318 additional papers “with more complex issues” with expressions of concern as it continued investigating. All of the papers retracted today previously had expressions of concern.
The 209 articles were retracted with five different notices. Some articles “contain indicators of third-party involvement” and the corresponding authors “were unable to provide a satisfactory explanation,” one read.
Others “had been accepted as a result of a peer-review process that did not meet the standards and expectations at Sage” and a post-publication peer review “highlighted fundamental concerns within the articles.”
For another batch with compromised peer review, the corresponding authors asked Sage to retract their articles after the publisher contacted them.
The notice for a fourth grouping of articles stated that the corresponding authors did not respond to Sage’s attempts to contact them, and:
Due to concerns around unauthorised third party involvement, overall questions about the integrity of the research and authenticity of the author byline, Sage retracts these articles.
One paper, “An attribute studentized fuzzy interval-valued chart based on normalized transformation,” had its own retraction notice, which stated:
After reading the Expression of Concern on this article, co-author Enas Abdulhay wrote to Sage to explain that they did not author this publication and did not know the first author.
Due to concerns about the authenticity of the author byline and overall integrity of the research, Sage retracts this article.
The Sage spokesperson told us:
Editorial and ethical oversight and peer review management for this journal are being managed within Sage. Additionally, our Research Integrity team is continually working to proactively investigate misconduct and respond accordingly when issues arise. More information about our approach to bulk retractions can be found in this commentary piece.
Sage retracted three dozen papers from a different engineering journal in July, and more than 20 others from yet another engineering journal in September. Other publishers have also issued large batches of retractions this year, as the industry continues to grapple with paper mills.
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200 out of 60,000 is a minute fraction.
https://retractionwatch.com/2023/10/31/guest-post-a-look-behind-the-scenes-of-bulk-retractions-from-sage/
“As research integrity manager at Sage, I work to safeguard the credibility of the research published in more than 60,000 articles every year across more than 1,100 journals”
Maybe off topic but if we were to calculate just the APC charges times 60k… And that’s before library/oa charges. Sounds like a sweet deal 😦
After reading the Expression of Concern on this article, co-author Enas Abdulhay wrote to Sage to explain that they did not author this publication and did not know the first author.
Abdulhay has an extensive record at PubPeer. Some threads involving papers signed with that name (whether or not Abdulhay authored them), while others stemmed from papers that appeared in Special Issues with Abdulhay as the Guest Editor.