A dean and professor at a public university in Iraq has lost another paper just weeks after we reported he was up to 16 retractions for authorship manipulation, fake peer review and other problems.
Yasser Fakri Mustafa of the University of Mosul was a coauthor of the newly retracted article, a review of how aerosol boxes affected intubation during the COVID‐19 pandemic. He denied wrongdoing.
As stated in the retraction notice, online September 23, the article’s title matched an authorship ad posted on social media on March 9, 2022, eight months before the paper appeared in Taylor & Francis’ Expert Review of Medical Devices.
The advertised work and the published paper also had “significant overlap” in abstracts and keywords, then-sleuth Nick Wise pointed out in a PubPeer post from August 2023 that included a screenshot of the Facebook authorship ad.
In August of this year, Wise, by then a research integrity manager at Taylor & Francis, contacted the authors of the offending article, according to an email we have seen.
“When contacted for an explanation, the corresponding author confirmed the article had been obtained from a concerning source and requested that the article was retracted,” the retraction notice states.
The corresponding author is Trias Mahmudiono of Universitas Airlangga in Surabaya, Indonesia, who has earned two retractions for violation of authorship policies. He did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Mustafa, who appears last in the author list, shared his correspondence with the publisher, which shows he did not reply to Wise’s email from August until the day after the retraction notice appeared. In his belated reply, he disagreed with Taylor & Francis’ move.
Mustafa told us he would like to see a link to the original Facebook post Wise had found, “rather than a screenshot, which can easily be fabricated.” He added:
Even if we hypothetically assume the PubPeer allegation to be accurate, the purportedly “offered” positions correspond to the second and fourth authors, whereas my position is the eleventh. This clearly indicates that I did not purchase authorship but contributed within the legitimate writing and review process. Since the corresponding author consented to the retraction, it remains plausible that he might have offered those authorship positions without informing the remaining co-authors.
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Despite the fact that dozens of papers are retracted each month, Frederik Joelving has chosen to focus his writing specifically on me. The retracted paper in question includes eleven authors, yet his attention is directed solely toward me. Furthermore, he selectively published only a particular section of my response to his email on his website and PubPeer. This selective publication may be linked to his inability to provide the Facebook link I requested.
Based on these observations, I invite readers to consider the following two questions:
1. Why has Frederik Joelving chosen to focus exclusively on me rather than on the other authors? Is this a personal matter, or an attempt to increase the visibility of his posts?
2. Why did he choose to publish only a specific excerpt from my response instead of sharing it in full?
Finally, I have included my complete response to Frederik Joelving below as a reference. “Thank you for reaching out regarding the recent retraction of the article “The impact of aerosol box on tracheal intubation during the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review.”
I would like to clarify several important points. I received a message from the journal on 28 August 2025, stating that the editors had decided to retract the paper due to “concerns regarding the integrity of the authorship of the article.” (I have forwarded this message to you for reference). However, I never received any prior communication from the journal concerning such issues, which unfortunately denied me the opportunity to respond before the retraction decision was finalized. In my view, it is essential that journals communicate directly with all listed authors, not solely the corresponding author, when concerns about authorship integrity arise. Transparency and due process are fundamental aspects of publication ethics and should be equally applied to every contributor.
Furthermore, I must note a significant inconsistency between the journal’s original statement and the published retraction notice. The initial correspondence cited “authorship integrity concerns,” whereas the final retraction notice referred to “a social media post appearing to offer authorship positions on an article with the same title.” These are distinct issues, and such inconsistency raises questions about the editorial communication process and the evidentiary basis for the retraction. My delayed response (I have forwarded this message to you for reference) to the journal’s inquiry was due to our national holiday period, not neglect or avoidance. As I mentioned in my official reply to the publisher, I was neither the corresponding author nor involved in the submission or communication process for this paper. Finally, one must reasonably ask: Where were the journal’s editorial and peer review safeguards during the three years following publication? If integrity concerns existed, they should have been addressed promptly and transparently at the time of submission, not years after acceptance.
Regarding your statement that “authorship of the paper apparently was offered for sale,” I kindly request that you provide verifiable evidence supporting this claim—preferably in the form of an accessible link rather than a screenshot, which can easily be fabricated. If your reference is to the PubPeer entry (https://pubpeer.com/publications/2041987DC33ED805E38BF27745CBF8#), I would like to note that this post appeared (August 2023) after the article had undergone revision (the revision was submitted on 8 August 2022). I would also appreciate it if you could share the Facebook link mentioned, to allow proper verification. Moreover, it is noteworthy that the PubPeer post reproduces an identical structured abstract, even though the cited journal differs from the one in which the paper was actually published.
Even if we hypothetically assume the PubPeer allegation to be accurate, the purportedly “offered” positions correspond to the second and fourth authors, whereas my position is the eleventh. This clearly indicates that I did not purchase authorship but contributed within the legitimate writing and review process. Since the corresponding author consented to the retraction, it remains plausible that he might have offered those authorship positions without informing the remaining co-authors. In light of these facts, I respectfully suggest that any inquiry or focus should be directed toward the corresponding, second, and fourth authors, rather than toward me.”