In 2019, Filippo Berto was hailed as Norway’s most productive researcher, publishing a new study on average every two to three days.
Five years on, a committee appointed by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), where Berto, a mechanical engineer, was based until last year, is recommending that the institution carries out an in-depth investigation into his work following a complaint by Per Steineide Refseth, a librarian at the Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences in Rena.
Rune Nydal, a philosopher at NTNU who leads the independent research integrity committee that met May 14 partly to discuss the complaint about Berto’s work, told Retraction Watch it is recommending NTNU’s rector conduct an in-depth probe into Berto’s papers and release a public statement on the outcome.
The recommendation was first reported yesterday by NTNU’s student newspaper.
Berto is accused of publishing duplicate studies in multiple journals, including references to irrelevant studies, and producing articles that contain keywords from advertisements from paper mills, which sell authorships and citations on bogus or subpar studies in exchange for a fee. By our count, Berto, who has reportedly expressed aspirations to become Europe’s most productive researcher, has at least five retractions to his name.
While the NTNU cannot sanction Berto since he no longer works there, Nydal noted that “any statement from the university is also a sanction.” He added that, “it’s in the institution’s interest in clarifying what happened and what the extent of [the problem] is.”
In September 2023, Berto moved to the Sapienza University of Rome in Italy. Retraction Watch has approached Sapienza and Berto for comments.
A policy in Norway now under review allows institutions in the country to benefit financially from the Ministry of Education and Research for every paper produced by their faculty and staff. According to NTNU’s student paper, in 2022, an average academic at Norwegian institutions accumulated 1.25 publication points. By comparison, between 2019 and 2022, Berto earned 407.08 publication points.
It will be up to the NTNU rector whether the institution will return the money the institution has received from the ministry directly as a result of Berto’s papers, Nydal said, adding that the amount is a significant sum. “It’s a more serious case here than the question of the money,” he said. “It’s a matter of [alleged] misuse of the publication system.”
“Researchers are evaluated too much based on how much they have published instead of the quality of what they have published, and that the Norwegian publication points system may have contributed to this,” Refseth, who has been involved in other research integrity efforts in the past, told us. “I support changing the system of publication-based funding in Norway.”
But Nydal said academia has enough incentives for researchers to continuously churn out papers even without the policy being in place.
Although Refseth’s complaint only flagged 17 or 18 studies, Berto authored hundreds more papers during his stint at NTNU. According to Google Scholar, Berto published 871 studies between the 2018 and 2023 calendar years.
“It certainly doesn’t look good,” Nydal said. “It’s an enormous amount of papers.”
To date, Berto has 28 papers flagged on PubPeer, 11 of which were added within the last month. Many of the comments on the site are from Angus Wilkinson, a materials scientist at the University of Oxford, in England, who said he came across a March 2023 PubPeer post by scientific sleuth Nick Wise, a fluid dynamics researcher at the University of Cambridge, in England.
In that post, Wise noted that the paper in question contains keywords from a Telegram advert offering to sell citations. “I’ve looked through the introduction section of this paper and suggest that ~65% of the papers cited are inappropriate for the subject area of the text,” wrote Wilkinson, whose area of expertise is the same as Berto, in response to Wise on PubPeer in November 2023.
That 2022 paper, “Effects of tensile overload on fatigue crack growth in AM60 magnesium alloys,” has since been retracted by Theoretical and Applied Fracture Mechanics. A retraction notice issued in December 2022 reads:
This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor in Chief.
After a thorough investigation, the Editor in Chief has concluded that this article must be retracted due to serious errors, such as including 24 inappropriate references, a duplication of Figure 13 from Figure 14 and changes of authorship without the approval of the Editor in Chief.
The scientific community takes a very strong view on this matter and apologies are offered to readers of the journal that this was not detected during the submission process.
As a consequence, Berto no longer serves on the editorial board of Theoretical and Applied Fracture Mechanics. According to NTNU’s student newspaper, Berto has also been removed from the editorial boards of the International Journal of Fatigue and Engineering Failure Analysis, which have also retracted papers by him, for similar reasons.
Engineering Failure Analysis retracted a 2021 study, “An investigation on fatigue behavior of AA2024 aluminum alloy sheets in fuselage lap joints,” by Berto and colleagues for “duplication of text and methodology, as well as salami slicing of research results.”
Meanwhile The International Journal of Fatigue has also retracted a 2021 study by Berto and colleagues, titled “Reliability analysis of fatigue crack growth for rail steel under variable amplitude service loading conditions and wear.” According to the retraction note, issued in November 2021, the paper duplicates “significant parts” of another already published study.
Fatigue & Fracture of Engineering Materials & Structures has retracted the 2017 study, “Fracture investigation of U-notch made of tungsten–copper functionally graded materials by means of strain energy density.” Its retraction note says that the paper was pulled in agreement with the authors because it has “considerable overlap with a previously published article.”
Berto and colleagues also retracted a study, “Fatigue Assessment of Ti-6Al-4V Circular Notched Specimens Produced by Selective Laser Melting,” published by Strength of Materials, noting in the retraction notice that the paper has already been published elsewhere.
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].
Leonid Schneider has certainly raised awareness to
Filippo Berto’s extensive “efforts” over at For Better Science @ https://forbetterscience.com/tag/filippo-berto/
A good researcher may publish max 5 papers a year rest all are manufacturered papers …. universities should demand quaĺity not quantity. Researchers are often forced to do so to increase research output of department.
Bad refereeing is one reason for the constant attempts by some authors to replicate already published results. On the other hand, competent and responsible referees are overburdened.
It is in any case impossible to publish at Berto’s rate without implementing dirty tricks.
A professor working solo may make 5 articles per year. Yet, Filippo Berto had over 40 PhD students/visiting fellows/research assistants. He had too many visitors that fellows had difficulties with working space. That makes at least 80 articles per year not involving joint projects or international collaborations. Berto Published 1200 articles. among them 4 problematic, that makes less than 0.3% problematic papers. He is still Filippo Berto. We cannot discredit him due to a 0.3% error. Thank you. Y.L.
“Berto Published 1200 articles. among them 4 problematic, that makes less than 0.3% problematic papers. ”
The correct way of looking at this, is that so far five(!) papers have been retracted. This is very likely a significant underestimate of the ethical(!) issues with his papers.
Totally faulty logic: “4 problematic” papers is 4 too many. It doesn’t really matter what the denominator is.
If the workflow leads to publication of “problematic” papers, the workflow needs to be investigated and changed. Less quantity, more quality please. The literature is riddled with a very high volume of low-quality papers.
One doesn’t just publish “problematic” papers unless they are content with not just toeing the line but being outright unethical, not to mention the enormity of releasing false information that people can now cite.
“He is still Filippo Berto. We cannot discredit him due to a 0.3% error. ” I laugh. It doesn’t matter who you are; if you are involved in misconduct, they will investigate. If nothing is wrong, then fine, applause for him.
If this is happening in the US, it would explain why no matter what “hardcore opinion” one has on any given topic made into an issue by the media, one can find “evidence” online to support it.