The International Wound Journal has retracted 242 papers so far this year as part of an ongoing investigation into manipulated peer review.
We reported in December the journal, a Wiley title, had retracted 27 papers as part of an investigation. A Wiley spokesperson told us the 2025 retractions are part of the same ongoing investigation, and that the editors “anticipate additional retractions in the weeks to come.”
All the retraction notices list manipulated peer review and share similar text, like the notice from this retraction of a 2023 paper:
Following an investigation by the publisher, all parties have concluded that this article was accepted solely on the basis of a compromised peer review process. The editors have therefore decided to retract the article.
Nearly 80 percent of the notices stated the authors did not respond to the notice regarding retraction, with 15 percent of authors disagreeing with the retraction.
A Wiley spokesperson told us for our last story the investigation started internally, but several of the retraction notices cited a “third party,” stating “It came to the publisher’s attention from a third party that a number of articles shared concerning similarities in format and structure.”
At least 21 of the 2025 retractions also credit a “third party” that found “evidence of excessive self-citations” in the articles’ references. The Wiley spokesperson didn’t respond to our request for more information about who the third party might refer to.
The journal became open access in 2021. In a 2023 editorial marking the journal’s 20th birthday, editors noted “submission volumes have increased exponentially.” The papers retracted to date were all published from 2022 to 2024.
In an August 2024 notice announcing the expansion of the journal’s editorial board, the editors noted the increase in submissions was due, in part, to papermill activity.
Earlier this year, Wiley retracted 26 papers from a different journal, Environmental Toxicology, for compromised peer review as part of an ongoing investigation.
Wiley has had a lot of experience with mass retractions for peer review issues in recent years. After buying Hindawi in 2021, Wiley has been attempting to clean up journals it acquired. (Neither International Wound Journal nor Environmental Toxicology are former Hindawi titles.) In 2023, Hindawi announced it would be retracting 8,000 articles for paper mill activity. Wiley has retracted over 11,000 papers from former Hindawi journals.
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