A journal of the UK-based Biochemical Society is retracting 25 papers after finding “systematic manipulation of our peer-review and publication processes by multiple individuals,” according to a statement provided to Retraction Watch.
The batch of retractions for Bioscience Reports is “the first time that we have issued this many retractions in one go for articles that we believe to be connected,” managing editor Zara Manwaring said in an email.
As academic publishing grapples with its papermill problem, many firms are retracting articles by the dozens, hundreds, or even thousands after discovering foul play.
Bioscience Reports already had retracted 20 papers this year, by our count. The latest batch means the journal’s yearly total will surpass 2023, when it pulled 32 papers, and the year before, when it pulled 26.
The total this year will approach the journal’s previous high of 51 retractions in 2021. The previous year, an anonymous PubPeer user flagged more than 50 articles with image issues (described on For Better Science), and the journal began a reckoning.
At the beginning of this year, the editorial office of Portland Press, the Biochemical Society’s publishing subsidiary, received an anonymous accusation of misconduct against an author with three articles in Bioscience Reports, according to the publisher’s statement.
The editorial office started investigating the papers, as well as the authors’ links to other articles as co-authors or peer reviewers, and identified 22 more “that we believe to have been compromised.”
The publisher found duplicate submissions of the same manuscript, unusual author email addresses, multiple submission accounts linked to the same email addresses, high levels of similarity and similar presentation of data between manuscripts by different authors, different authors suggesting the same peer reviewers for their manuscripts, and other “suspicious patterns” described in the Committee on Publication Ethics’ document on systematic manipulation of the publication process.
The editors of the journal contacted all the authors with their findings, and received seven responses contesting the retractions.
“Given the extent of the issues identified in these papers, it was agreed that the responses from the authors rebutting our findings were unconvincing,” the publisher stated. “As the integrity of all 25 articles remain compromised in the view of the Publisher and Editorial Board, we have now proceeded with retracting the articles.”
Retraction Watch has emailed the corresponding authors of each paper requesting comment. We received some “address not found” messages, but no responses.
The 25 articles, which originally appeared between 2017 and 2020, have nearly the same retraction notice, differing only in whether the authors disagreed with the retraction or didn’t respond to the journal.
The notices, such as the one for “Long-term load duration induces N-cadherin down-regulation and loss of cell phenotype of nucleus pulposus cells in a disc bioreactor culture,” includes the full list of retracted articles and states:
This article is one of twenty-five publications being retracted from Bioscience Reports at the request of the Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board following receipt of a notification from a reader, alerting the Editorial Office to suspected misconduct in three of these articles.
Following this notification, the Editorial Office has investigated the three articles in question, and identified links to a further twenty-two publications with compromised peer review, duplicated images and authorship concerns.
The articles have been cited more than 450 times collectively, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.
After learning of its papermill problem in 2020, Bioscience Reports changed its submission and peer review policies to require authors to submit raw data for Western blots and at least one author to provide their current institutional email address.
The batch of articles retracted today were all submitted and accepted before those changes, Manwaring said.
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Wouldn’t it be interesting to promote a special window of opportunity for publishers and authors, where they have four weeks to formally notify journals that their submissions are withdrawn. No reason required.
IF this option is not taken, then any remaining fraud will be deemed deliberate.
Publishers should follow a rigorous filtering/checking process before they publish. Can someone create such a process and then invite the publishers to
A, use and abide by the process and
B, retrospectively check their catalog
Publishers whom respond appropriately and/actively perform the necessary steps are sorted top of the list for credibility.
Tons of papers contain garbage, but none cares. Quality is compromised with quantity, and the winner is the one who publishes more, doesn’t matter what and how. These are the realities of today. Guess what follows.
Funnily enough, I sent the editor group at Portland Press an email on January 7 entitled “Stick a fork in it,” about a paper with many comments on PubPeer that had been festering with an editorial expression of concern for almost 3 years: https://doi.org/10.1042/BSR20160048. It still has not been retracted.
PubPeer comments are found here: https://pubpeer.com/publications/9D552EF73D754EE1BE2C03E0322324
That paper appears to have (finally) been retracted in February of this year. Credit where it’s due, your email probably is what prompted them to finally dust off the file and take action.
I can understand why you might not have noticed the retraction, though. I am distinctly unimpressed by how inconspicuous the retraction is on the journal’s website, and the fact that the article PDF isn’t watermarked or otherwise flagged. On the article’s page, you have to look for the retraction notice beneath the expression of concern in the benignly-titled “Connected content” box.
The PubPeer plugin is much more effective at highlighting articles that have issues – including this one – though even PubPeer still only flags the EoC, rather than the retraction. (The retraction notice was posted in the PubPeer comments, though.)
it appears that the editor-in-cheif and/or editorial board has changed recently? was Dr Wanjin HONG the editor-in-chief until recently? Why the journal/publisher has special instructions for China-based researchers – https://portlandpress.com/china!!
One of the now-retracted papers impressed the editors enough that they published a 26th Commentary paper to interpret and promote its made-up results. See
“High glucose promotes annulus fibrosus cell apoptosis through activating the JNK and p38 MAPK pathways” (Shan et al 2019)
and
“Bioactive lipids in intervertebral disc degeneration and its therapeutic implications” (Das 2019). https://portlandpress.com/bioscirep/article/39/10/BSR20192117/220513/Bioactive-lipids-in-intervertebral-disc