In late May, one of Sasan Sadrizadeh’s doctoral students stumbled upon a paper with data directly plagiarized from his previous work.
Sadrizadeh, a researcher at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, was the last author on “Supply-demand side management of a building energy system driven by solar and biomass in Stockholm: A smart integration with minimal cost and emission,” published in September 2023 in Energy Conversion and Management.
The paper with matching data, “Optimizing smart building energy systems for sustainable living: A realistic approach to enhance renewable energy consumfaption [sic] and reduce emissions in residential buildings,” appeared online as an “article in press” in Elsevier’s Energy and Buildings in May.
Sadrizadeh told us the methodology reported in the article was “so amusing that I felt compelled to share it” on LinkedIn. In his post, Sadrizadeh calls out “unique Stockholm data magically transformed into an Iraq case study, courtesy of 16 authors from six different countries!” He also included the following picture of data presented in the two papers:
The left image is from Sadrizadeh’s paper, while the right is from the article in Energy and Buildings.
The lead author of the May study, Qusay Hassan, is a researcher at the University of Diyala in Baqubah, Iraq. He did not respond to our requests for comment.
Jianlei Niu, the editor-in-chief of Energy and Buildings, saw Sadrizadeh’s LinkedIn post calling out the similarities in data and reached out to him, Sadrizadeh told Retraction Watch. The paper was later withdrawn. Niu forwarded our request for comment to the publisher’s ethics team, which did not respond to our emails.
The withdrawal statement from the journal reads:
This article has been withdrawn by the editor. The journal concluded that there were possible duplicates/manipulations in Figures 2, 5, 6, 11, 15, and 16 with the published article, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2023.117420. The explanation provided by the author was not able to resolve these issues. The article has therefore been withdrawn. The Publisher apologizes for any inconvenience this may cause.
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From the Pubpeer of the lead author, Hassan Qusay:
https://pubpeer.com/search?q=Qusay+Hassan
several of his articles are discussed for the same pattern.
For instance the modelling results presented in Figure 6, 7, 8, and 9., of the article “Implement and evaluate resilient energy infrastructures capable of withstanding spatial, temporal, and annual weather fluctuations in Saudi Arabia by 2050” in fact, are copied from following article.
Zeyringer, M., Price, J., Fais, B. et al. Designing low-carbon power systems for Great Britain in 2050 that are robust to the spatiotemporal and inter-annual variability of weather. Nat Energy 3, 395–403 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-018-0128-x
See Pubpeer for further detail:
https://pubpeer.com/publications/2A0FBCFD3DA45AAE55FAD03058B13C
or the article “Mapping Europe renewable energy landscape: Insights into solar, wind, hydro, and green hydrogen production”
copied from:
“Kakoulaki, Georgia, et al. “Green hydrogen in Europe–A regional assessment: Substituting existing production with electrolysis powered by renewables.” Energy conversion and management 228 (2021): 113649.” https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2020.113649
Further details here: https://pubpeer.com/publications/E0BFF5F22D5815459AF4987E22E7E9
It seams that several articles of Qusay Hassan with the same authors may have similar issue with the data:
https://pubpeer.com/search?q=Qusay+Hassan
BTW, what other co-authors think of this? did editorial or RW asked other coauthors?
If editors check the concepts instead of solely relaying on similarity checks many of these plagiarisms will be prevented. Also using new tools to detect the figure duplication helps a lot to filter out these bad practices.
I can see that Hassan Qusay has an article titled: “The renewable energy role in the global energy Transformations” reported in Pubpeer: https://pubpeer.com/publications/80503316061CCA6CA6F7D8B8F77554
which is identical to this article: Dolf Gielen et al., “The role of renewable energy in the global energy transformation” Energy Strategy Reviews: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esr.2019.01.006
These two articles have very similar title and share many identical figures in Elsevier. It is surprising how publisher cannot see these red flags.
The original dataset includes 100 residential apartments in Stockholm. It appears as if Qusay Hassan and his team refurbished the original article and pretended that these buildings are located in Iraq. It would be wise from the other Elsevier’s journals whom published Qusay Hassan’s flagged articles to examine these articles.
Elsevier or it’s editorial has no system to flag the duplicated figures? So anyone can reuse other articles’ figures?
I wonder why the article is withdrawn instead of being retracted.
As the article was in still in the Press and not yet received volume and issue number, at this stage is withdrawn.
I noticed that the withdrawn article has an extensive number of 16 co-authors from 6 countries, this is extensive and could have been considered as a red flag.
Coauthors are:
Qusay Hassan, Nadia Sarhan, Emad Mahrous Awwad, Tariq J. Al-Musawi, Nouby M. Ghazaly, Patrik Viktor, Monika Fodor, Amjad Iqbal, Sergey Zhiltsov, Azamat Makhmudov, Ali Khudhair Al-Jiboory, Ihssan Alrekabi, Sameer Algburi, Marek Jaszczur, Aws Zuhair Sameen, Maha Barakat
From the authors list I can spot other recent retraction in Elsevier also due to image manipulation:
“RETRACTED: Quercetin modulates expression of serum exosomal long noncoding RNA NEAT1 to regulate the miR-129-5p/BDNF axis and attenuate cognitive impairment in diabetic mice”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0024320524000389
Adapting a reliable tool by the publishers to flag the figure manipulation/duplication prior to publication is essential.
The withdrawal statement from the journal reads:
“The explanation provided by the author was not able to resolve these issues.”
But why editor did not ask other 15 coauthors, and only asks one author?
Did other 15 coauthors agreed or disagreed with this retraction?
The retraction note is not informative. It seams rather a rush decosion for retraction with minimum investigation.
Did editor and publisher followed COPE flowchart?
I suggest someone reads this article of Qusay Hassan:
“Enhancing smart grid integrated renewable distributed generation capacities: Implications for sustainable energy transformation” https://doi.org/10.1016/j.seta.2024.103793
The article uses several figures from:
International Energy Agency report 2022, available at: https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2022
The article has no methodology or results. and it is so hard to grasp anything from its AI generated text.
Given his past antecedents, it appears the author and some of his 15 coauthors are a serial plagiarists. Very, very disappointing.
How did the editor accept this with 16 authors?
What did each author do? What was the justification of job-distribution and accepting such an extremely diverse author list?
In this era were PhDs need journal articles for one to graduate, has led to this. A review of requirements is very necessary
The study was funded by Saudi. Yet I can see the research methodology, data, results and figures identical the former study. What were the role of the EU-based authors? They could not check these issues? Editors could not check the novelty?
The building energy consumption in Sweden is significantly different from Iraq or Saudi. It is sad that neither editors nor reviewers, not even the long list of extra authors or readers could identify this misconduct. I wish Elsevier investigate the rest of these authors articles.
AI threatens scientific research with fake papers.
It is indeed true that: “the first sign of a fake science paper is usually something small” i.e., a duplicated figure.
https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/science/2024/06/29/ai-threatens-scientific-research-with-fake-papers#hrd
Qusay Hassan’s articles in Elsevier are reported to often taken from other studies.
Elsevier and other publishers must be equipped with the latest AI and duplication detection tools for the first screening of submissions. It’s 2024 for the sake of science. Publishers! Please upgrade and improve. Also being an editor must be a full-time job. A bussy professor can not efficiently handle a journal.
Other articles of Qusay Hassan has the exact same issue, for instance this article:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2024.102535
has the same data and figures of this article published 4 years earlier:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2020.113649
or this article:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sftr.2024.100182
has the same data and figures of this article published 6 years earlier:
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-018-0128-x
I wonder if the Elsevier editorial team even check what they publish anymore.
Many of Qusay Hassan’s coauthors have no relevance to this paper. Maybe it’s best if the journals try to check the relevance of authors’ background.
The tip of the iceberg. A better quality check is expected from Elsevier.
It must have been devastating for the authors of the original study. The bad players’ other publications must be investigated by Elsevier.