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The week at Retraction Watch featured:
- A new way to support Retraction Watch this Giving Tuesday
- Purdue agrees to pay feds back $737,000 for grant submissions with fake data
- Professor in Jordan sues sleuth who exposed citation anomalies
- Author of ‘gibberish’ paper admits to extensive plagiarism
- Elsevier investigating articles linked to controversial French researcher
Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to over 375. There are more than 45,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains well over 200 titles. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers? Or The Retraction Watch Mass Resignations List?
Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):
- “41 hijacked journals are still compromising the data of legitimate journals in Scopus.” From the creator of the Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker.
- “The SNSF is no longer funding Open Access articles in special issues.” More on the problem with special issues here.
- “Our customer database at Scientific Reports was accessed by an unauthorised person on November 19, 2023.”
- Head of company that accredits autism service providers resigns after article retraction.
- “Additionally, 43.3% of researchers acknowledged having intentionally engaged in some type of scientific misconduct (self-reported frequency).”
- “Mass resignations rock publication on international students.”
- “Bucking History, ORI Deputy Denies Requests For Misconduct NPRM Comment Extension.” Then the agency reverses itself.
- “Proposed changes to rules for policing fraud in U.S.-funded biomedical research draw a mixed response.”
- “Saudi universities lose highly cited researchers after payment schemes raise ethics concerns.”
- “Open Science Charter makes urgent appeal for open access.”
- “Providing a direct survey link, even with CAPTCHA-protection, evoked fraudulent responses.” Earlier: “Scammers threaten quality of research survey data.”
- “Submitting papers to several journals at once.”
- “UAE university breaks ties with beleaguered nanoscientist.”
- “Evidence from 10 RCTs suggests that training peer reviewers may lead to little or no improvement in the quality of peer review.”
- “Sports Illustrated Published Articles by Fake, AI-Generated Writers. We asked them about it — and they deleted everything.”
- “AI Use in Manuscript Preparation for Academic Journals.”
- “To improve social science publications let’s lose the discussion section.”
- At CNRS, “transparency in the way allegations of misconduct are treated is a difficult issue.”
- “Scientific fraud: science as we have never seen it.”
- “Patients ‘betrayed’ by Canadian researchers, advocate says of clinical trial probe.”
- “Poor statistical reporting, inadequate data presentation and spin persist despite Journal awareness and updated Information for Authors.”
- “Science is littered with zombie studies. Here’s how to stop their spread.”
- “The persistence of eugenics in mainstream journals highlights major gaps in research integrity.”
- “Retracted publications in BRICS countries: an analytical study.”
- “Most codes claim [research integrity] RI teaching is for all researchers, but without any in-depth guidance.”
- “The Publication Facts Label: Ascertaining a Publication’s Adherence to Scholarly Standards.”
- “Metadata analysis of retracted fake papers in Naunyn-Schmiedeberg’s Archives of Pharmacology.”
- “Our findings add to others suggesting that communicators can be transparent about statistical uncertainty without undermining their credibility as a source but should endeavour to provide a quantification, such as a numeric range, where possible.”
- “The study was retracted years ago. How did it get into guidelines for pregnant women?”
- “‘Serious misconduct’ prompted Sydney whistleblower’s removal.”
- “Publishing concerns and budget problems bedevil research offices.”
- “The scientific world recognises when you stick your neck out and do the right thing.” An interview with Chelsea Polis.
- “Extreme productivity has become worryingly common across scientific fields with rapidly increasing rates in some countries and settings.”
- “From bench to bot: How to use AI tools to convert notes into a draft.”
- Our Ivan Oransky is speaking at a free DOAJ webinar on Dec. 7 about trust.
Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, subscribe to our free daily digest or paid weekly update, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or add us to your RSS reader. If you find a retraction that’s not in The Retraction Watch Database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at [email protected].