Nearly two years after being warned one of its journals appeared to be the target of a paper mill operation, Taylor & Francis has retracted 80 articles that appeared in that journal.
Last June, Undark and Retraction Watch reported on the efforts of a sleuth using the name Aishwarya Swaminathan to alert Taylor & Francis and other publishers starting in April 2022 that a data scientist named Gunasekaran Manogaran allegedly runs “a research paper publishing scam” that targets special issues. Such issues appear to be particularly vulnerable to paper mills.
Another sleuth, Nick Wise, also worked to suss out the problems, and El Pais reported on the links between Manogaran and a professor in Spain in October.
Now, Acta Agriculturae Scandinavica, Section B — Soil & Plant Science has retracted 80 papers, all with a notice that specifies the name of the relevant special issue:
This article has been retracted from publication in the Taylor & Francis journal, Acta Agriculturae Scandinavica, Section B — Soil & Plant Science.
Following publication, concerns were raised by multiple third-parties around the content of the special issue and the decision-making process.
Following an investigation by the Taylor & Francis Publishing Ethics & Integrity team in full cooperation with the Editor-in-Chief, it was confirmed that this article included in Special Issue titled “Envisage Computer Modelling and Statistics for Agriculture”, guest edited by Gunasekaran Manogaran was not peer-reviewed appropriately, in line with the Journal’s peer review standards and policy.
As the stringency of the peer review process is core to the integrity of the publication process, the Editor and Publisher have decided to retract all of the articles within the above-named Special Issue.
The journal has not confirmed if the authors were aware of this compromised peer review process.
The journal is committed to correcting the scientific record and will fully cooperate with any institutional investigations into this matter. The authors have been informed of this decision.
We have been informed in our decision-making by our policy on publishing ethics and integrity and the COPE guidelines.
Manogaran, who has at least 14 retractions of his own papers, did not respond to a request for comment.
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So 80 papers retracted here. Then there was the case where 50 Saudi Arabian papers were retracted. And then the case where Springer pulls 36 papers from a special edition. And on and on . . .
Makes me shudder to think just how much more falsified material remains in the body of scientific literature – and what damage it has caused when researchers unknowingly use that falsified research and data to further our understanding of a particular topic.
Now, we know where our donation to RW goes.
Good to see Undark doing something positive. I’m still mad at them about this incident where they misrepresented the work of a statistician (me) and a science reporter (Stephanie Lee).
Interesting. Not, in my experience, unusual. As you say, one might possibly expect better of M.I.T. Condolences. There are issues in the education of journalists generally, and here and there, there seem to be efforts to address them.
Yeah, collab with Undark made me uneasy, too. They publish a lot I find misleading.
I find it rather mind boggling that most ( if not the majority) of these shenanigans come from ” researchers” from The Global South.I am from the GS and I know that in our countries ( especially one ….) the punishment is not as stringent and harsh as in the Global North and these “scientists” think they can get away as easy as they do in their home countries.Let’s expose them and denounce them , if it were up to me I would create a site where all these persons would be simply ostracised and put to shame,if they know what shame is !!!!