A newly appointed dean at the University of Guelph in Canada has had two papers retracted for “evidence of authorship manipulation.”
Another article by the researcher, Moncef Nehdi, formerly of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, seems to match a paper that had its authorship advertised for sale, according to a post on PubPeer.
Nehdi told Retraction Watch he stands by his group’s work in the two retracted papers, but agreed with the retractions because he thought the investigations “raised some valid concerns.”
Nehdi began a five-year term as dean of the University of Guelph’s College of Engineering and Physical Sciences on September 1, according to an announcement this spring. The announcement stated:
A prolific author, Nehdi has written more than 470 research publications and was listed by Elsevier and the Shanghai Global Ranking in the world’s top 60 most impactful civil engineers. Nehdi is well positioned to advance U of G’s reputation as a leader in sustainability research with his expertise in sustainable construction, artificial intelligence and machine learning in civil engineering.
The University of Guelph has not responded to our request for comment.
Last year, two Elsevier journals retracted articles on which Nehdi was the corresponding author. The notices, which were similar, began:
This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief. Following receipt of a whistle-blower complaint, an investigation of this paper was conducted. The Editor-in-Chief no longer has confidence in the scientific integrity of this paper.
Each paper “exhibits evidence of authorship manipulation,” the notices stated.
The notice for “Mechanical, thermal, durability and microstructural behavior of hybrid waste-modified green reactive powder concrete,” originally published in Construction and Building Materials in August 2022, continued:
Changes in authorship were made to the paper during the review and revision process, in contravention of the journal policies on authorship changes. The journal apologises to readers for not having identified these changes at the time. Following correspondence with the authorship of this paper, questions regarding appropriate contribution of all co-authors are raised. Multiple authors admit not knowing the others and “never having collaborated”. One author identified their contribution as “XRD analysis”; none is reported in the paper. The corresponding author was unable to identify the laboratories at which all aspects of the experimental [sic] were conducted.
The six authors listed on the paper are affiliated with six different universities in five countries. The article has been cited 15 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.
The other retracted article, “Alkali-activated fly ash concrete with untreated coal aggregate: Fresh- and hardened state properties,” appeared in Case Studies in Construction Materials in December 2022. It has only been cited by its retraction notice.
“Seven co-authors were added to the paper during the review and revision process, in contravention of the journal policies on authorship changes,” according to the notice. It continued:
In the course of the investigation two issues of potential data manipulation were also identified. When raw data was requested from the corresponding author, of the initial submission [not the corresponding author listed in the published version, but still a co-author] curated data was provided. The metadata on the curated data predates the reported conduct of the study by five years. Photos of test specimens provided as ‘proof’ the study was conducted were clearly of different dimension than those reported in the paper.
The corresponding author of the published paper is unable to provide more clarifying information and has indicated agreement with this retraction.
The 13 authors on the paper are affiliated with 12 different universities in 10 countries.
Nehdi and his team “collaborate on research studies with international scholars when we believe that it brings a multi-disciplinary perspective to problem solving and enhances the research outcomes,” and “rely on their professionalism and work ethics,” he told us. “In each study, we collaborate, in good faith, and use our best judgement [sic] to ensure that the data is authentic, the scientific basis is robust, and that every co-author has significantly contributed to the work to be published.”
Elsevier began scrutinizing Nehdi’s two retracted articles as it investigated all the papers of a coauthor who “was involved in data manipulation in various publications they co-authored with a reputed scholar in Europe, who is also the editor of a Q1 journal,” Nehdi told us.
One of Nehdi’s coauthors, Arash Karimi Pour, listed at the University of Texas at El Paso, has lost 21 other papers, by our count. We previously reported on him as a coauthor of Jorge de Brito, a civil engineering researcher and professor at the University of Lisbon with more than a dozen retractions.
“When approached about the issue, I recommended retracting both papers since I believe that retraction is better than keeping in the open literature publications that may have doubt about possible data manipulation or other ethical concerns,” Nehdi said. He continued:
To be clear, I still believe that our work reported in both studies is sound, but I lost faith in the part of the work contributed by the said co-author, and thus I supported the retraction decisions. The partial evidence I had is that when I asked specific questions to my co-author that were conveyed to me by the journal, they did not produce consistent answers with what I have understood during the paper development and publication process. So, I reported the answers as is to the journals and thought retraction was warranted.
In September, scientific sleuth Nick Wise posted a comment on PubPeer about another of Nehdi’s articles:
On the 1st of January 2022 an advert was placed on an Iranian Telegram channel offering authorship of a paper. The keywords are a match to this paper.
Wise included a screenshot of the advertisement.
“I was not aware of this issue, and I have no good reason to doubt the scientific accuracy or ethical standards of the work,” Nehdi told us. “I would be interested to know more about where the information comes from regarding the paper potentially having been advertised as having authorship positions for sale. If there is reasonable doubt that the claim is true, I will take the initiative and ask the journal to retract it.”
He concluded:
Unfortunately, as very busy researchers who pursue quality work and abide by high ethical standards within an established culture of research excellence in our reputed institutions, we do not think about issues like these until they sadly happen. We have learned the hard way that collaborating with other scholars who are far away can create some vulnerably [sic]. Retracting those papers was an eye opener for me, and I personally have since been trying to learn from the experience to heighten the scrutiny of who we can collaborate with going forward and have declined numerous opportunities to collaborate on research studies for risk mitigation.
Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at [email protected].
Regrading the ‘[sic]’ inclusion relating to the spelling of ‘judgement’. This is British English…
…and of course I myself cannot spell correctly in American or British English to save myself! ‘Regrading’ should have been ‘regarding’. :)))
I observed that, the editor-in-chief of the Elsevier journal, Case Studies in Construction Materials, is Kosmas Sideris who is also the handling editor of the other article in Construction and Building Materials. He was indeed responsible for checking and approving the authorship changes, in which he clearly failed to do so. He, himself has many articles reported in Pubeer for publishing in his own journals, i.e., conflict of interests:
https://pubpeer.com/search?q=Sideris
Elsevier must reconsider the ability and suitability of the editorial teams of its journals. At least the editors should check the simple task of authorship change approval. If Kosmas Sideris did his job correctly this Dean’s reputation wont be harmed now. Also is it even allowed that editors publish in their own journals? Elsevier Please investigate!
Good point! Many Elsevier Editors are indeed careless as we see in this instance. There is often no journal manager and very poor article handling. Editors who fail to handle correctly leading to a retraction must be investigated, taken accountable and fired if found guilty.
The Elsevier editors involved must be investigated.
“Seven co-authors were added to the paper during the review” didn’t EiC, Kosmas Sideris, check this? How hard is it to check and confirm the authorship? I belive he must elaborate whether he checks yhe basic ethics of the articles he publishes. Such issues must be resolved before publications.
The current practice is indeed not fair .
“He, himself has many articles reported in Pubeer for publishing in his own journals, i.e., conflict of interests:
https://pubpeer.com/search?q=Sideris”
Do keep in mind that several of those reports appear to be misleading – while he is an editor *now*, he does not seem to have been at the time of the articles’ publication, at least in the case of the “Construction and Building Materials” journal.
Obviously, nobody is expected to retroactively declare conflicts on all their past publications when they become an editor!
I should probably add that I do not dispute the other point: yes, the editors should have noticed prior to the publication.
However: “If Kosmas Sideris did his job correctly this Dean’s reputation wont be harmed now.” – No. If the dean did not want his reputation to be harmed, he should not have associated with people who falsify authorship (whether or not he was directly involved). After all, he, too, had a chance to notice and report these changes.
Let me briefly recall that Kosmas Sideris took over the Elsevier Journal of “Case Studies in Construction Materials”, just after the former EiC, Afonso Rangel Garcez de Azevedo was caught duplication and paper milling:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214509523008495
and extensively publishing in his journal:, e.g.,
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214509522000298
Afonso Rangel Garcez de Azevedo from publishing one paper per year suddenly published 80 per year, just after he become EiC:
https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=57218164219
You see how becoming EiC how can elevate one person’s publication ability. as soon as he entered the EiC club, he could publish in his friends journals and his friends in his journal.
Investigating the other EiC, e.g., Kosmas Sideris is the job of the Elsevier, not me. As far as I can see Kosmas Sideris had been in editorial board and in close collaboration with both journals mentioned in this post.
The other EiC of the Elsevier journal of “Case Studies in Construction Materials” is Tianyu Xie.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/case-studies-in-construction-materials
Not only he constantly publishes in his journal, he also publishes in Elsevier Construction and Building Materials.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214509523009968
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214509523000116
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214509522007239
I wish to ask Elsevier, how, a very young researcher gets to be EiC? are EiCs ever investigated?
One can’t help but wonder why the Publisher, in such cases, only questions authors, but not the handling editors. A handling editor has two tasks to perform, i.e., firstly appointing at least two relevant and independent reviewers, and secondly, checking the authorship. If a handling editor once fail the system, he/she may not hold the editor position. Yet, we often never get to know who handled the article. And they keep doing what they do.
Citations really stacked up fast. 15 citations to Nehdi’s article are a lot for an article published 18 months ago. The first citing article (first author Othuman Mydin) also has a highly geographically diverse author list. That article in turn has 12 citations which is unusually high for an original research article published in 2023. They did well in the marketplace of ideas or maybe some other kind of marketplace?
I think, Elsevier should STOP, publishing ranking reports, like top 2% top scientist, because of such ranking many of the papers are published with manipulated results.
I personally, see this, where you see more retraction from the institute where you have good number of 2% top scientist.
all of us know that nobody can write 60-70 papers in an year, all these people are part of nexus, and authors names ate added for financial gain or other favours.
Authors, reviewers, editors all are part of nexus. Manipulation is going on everywhere.
Why not checking the articles prior to the publication? The Editors cannot initiate a retraction for the fault themselves made. or perhaps was it a trap for the authors?
It seems like integrity is in short supply these days!
Whether at Stanford University or Harvard the termination of University president’s for falsified/manipulated
research data is spreading according to the press. The value the manipulation crowd places on their materials may best be reflected by the press account of Marc Tessier Lavigne attack on the Stanford Daily reporter who brought light to his manipulated data.
This level of duplicity and fraud goes deeper that we think! This Dean is very “prolific” to say the least! How does a normal human being publish 450 papers at his age-looks young to me ???!!! Even if he was 65 years old, publishing 450 papers in a life time is just unimaginable!
Being honest has become a rare commodity. Those who hire these people in positions of power and responsibility may be either blind or just plain dishonest.
The Editors-in-Chief of the Journal of Case Studies in Construction Materials are reported on Pubpeer for publishing in their own journal:
https://pubpeer.com/search?q=authors%3A+%22Tianyu+Xie%22
https://pubpeer.com/search?q=sideris
Elsevier must investigate please!