Finance professor in Ireland loses 12 papers in journals he edited

Elsevier has pulled a dozen papers by a finance professor in Ireland who oversaw the review of the articles and made “the final decision” to publish them in three journals he edited, according to the retraction notices.  

The professor, Brian M. Lucey of Trinity College Dublin, and his coauthors disagreed with the retractions, which came a few days before Christmas.

“I’m not disputing the fact that I made the final decision” to publish the articles, some of which have garnered hundreds of citations, Lucey told us in an interview. ”What I’m disputing is that that is not prima facie grounds” for retracting them.

”Because here’s the thing: Elsevier are aware of [editors publishing in their own journals] as a pretty common practice in finance and economics. We’ve given them evidence of hundreds of instances of this. And nothing has happened, which does raise the question, you know, maybe they’re going to go back and go look at all these. Presumably, they will treat everything the same.” Lucey shared his list of such instances. It includes 240 articles, 133 of which are in Science of the Total Environment, which was delisted from Clarivate’s Web of Science in November. 

As first reported by the Irish Independent, Lucey and his coauthors, who include several high-profile economists, have complained about the retractions to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). He told us “COPE and publishers’ guidelines say you should only retract when the science is wrong.” (In fact, COPE’s guidelines are more nuanced, stating articles can be retracted when the “peer review or publication process was compromised,” and editors “should always make the final decision about retracting material, except in instances where the editor is compromised or has a conflict of interest.”)

Lucey has held top editorial positions at all three Elsevier titles involved in the retractions – the International Review of Financial Analysis, the International Review of Economics & Finance and Finance Research Letters – but said his business relationship with the publisher ended last fall by mutual agreement. His decision to publish his own work in the journals was “the rationale given” by Elsevier for wanting to end the relationship, he said. Lucey is currently editor-in-chief at Wiley’s Journal of Economic Surveys and Springer Nature’s Energy Finance.

A close collaborator of Lucey’s, Samuel A. Vigne of Luiss Business School in Rome, who until recently was an editor-in-chief of Finance Research Letters and an associate editor of the International Review of Financial Analysis, also has disappeared from those journals’ editorial boards, their websites show. Vigne did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“We can confirm these papers were retracted from 19 December to 23 December 2025,” an Elsevier spokesperson told us. “We uphold the highest standards of rigor and ethics in our publishing to protect the quality and integrity of research. Editors can publish in their journals as long as they are compliant to our policies. Please refer to our Publishing Ethics policies for further information regarding editorial conflicts of interests. These policies usually do not apply to editorials, notes and similar types of articles.”

“We can’t provide further insights regarding editors’ contracts while investigations are ongoing,” the spokesperson said.

The retraction notices vary in the specific editorial role ascribed to Lucey, but otherwise are identically worded.

“Elsevier’s Research Integrity and Publishing Ethics team, with guidance from an impartial field expert acting in the role of an independent Publishing Ethics Advisor, conducted an investigation and determined that the article should be retracted,” one notice states.

”Review of this submission was overseen, and the final decision was made, by the Editor Brian Lucey, despite his role as a co-author of the manuscript,” it continues. ”This compromised the editorial process and breached the journal’s policies.”

Some of the articles have been cited hundreds of times. “Cryptocurrencies as a financial asset: A systematic analysis,” for instance, has racked up 707 citations, according to Clarivate Web of Science. 

On LinkedIn, a post about Lucey’s retractions by Richard Tol of the University of Sussex, in England, drew dozens of comments from other economists.

“It was about time! Anyway, publishing in these specific journals is very bad signaling – for quite a few years now – in many institutions,” wrote Fotios Pasiouras of MBS School of Business in France, who worked with Lucey on a conference paper from 2018.

Others offered a different opinion: “I think it’s widely understood in academia that many editors follow similar practices. Singling out one person – Brian in this case – as a scapegoat strikes me as unfair,” wrote Klaus Grobys of the University of Vaasa in Finland.

Until he parted ways with the publisher, Lucey helped coordinate Elsevier’s Finance Journals Ecosystem, which allows participating journals to suggest transferring a rejected manuscript to another journal in the system without the need for resubmission and the associated cost. That system, and the editors involved, came under fire last year when a preprint suggested it might facilitate citation stacking as a way to boost journal impact factors. The analysis in the preprint also suggested a citation ring involving Elsevier editors could be at work, according to the authors.

Lucey referred us to a rebuttal uploaded to the same preprint server that he and several other editors had written, and said most claims in the paper were “wrong” and “most of the interpretations were ungrounded in analysis.”

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