The Sage journal American Surgeon has issued a mass expression of concern for 116 articles.
The expression of concern states the journal “was made aware” of “concerning author activity” on the articles.
Sage is no stranger to mass editorial actions. In 2023, the publisher pulled large tranches of papers at least three times, and last year it retracted over 450 papers from a journal the company had acquired from IOS Press. The publisher was one of the first to begin retracting papers in bulk, primarily to combat manipulated peer review.
Don Nakayama, the editor-in-chief of the journal and a pediatric surgeon in Columbus, Georgia, forwarded our request for comment to Sage.
In an email to Retraction Watch, Laura West, a Sage spokesperson, said “SCOPUS” — presumably Elsevier’s Scopus database — reached out with concerns “about the quality of content in this journal.” Sage won’t provide any additional information while the investigation is ongoing, West said.
Elsevier did not respond directly to questions regarding the tip from Scopus.
All of the concerning papers had one common author: Adel Elkbuli. Elkbuli’s affiliation is listed on the most recent articles as the Department of Surgery at Orlando Regional Medical Center, in Florida, although he does not appear to have a directory listing or profile page at the center. He is also affiliated with the University of Miami.
Elkbuli did not respond to our request for comment. He has 378 publications listed in Clarivate’s Web of Science that have been cited a total of over 3,000 times.
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