Sage journal retracts more than 40 papers over concerns with peer review, author contributions

Sage has retracted 45 papers from one of its journals for questionable authorship and peer review.  

The publisher began an investigation into Clinical Hemorheology and Microcirculation last year to address citation concerns, a Sage spokesperson told Retraction Watch. The journal was one of 20 titles that lost their impact factors in Clarivate’s 2025 Journal Citation Reports for excessive self-citation and citation stacking.

Sage retracted the articles due to “concerns around the peer review process underlying these articles and author contributions to these articles, as well as the integrity of the research process,” according to the retraction notice, published November 23. The publisher detected “one or more” issues in each of the papers, including patterns of citation manipulation, indicators of third-party involvement and problems with peer review.

The spokesperson would not comment on whether papermill activity was suspected in the articles’ production nor elaborate on the concerns about author contributions. 

Authors listed on the Clinical Hemorheology and Microcirculation papers are primarily from China, Germany and Iran, and many of the studies share  authors and affiliations. For example, the department of ultrasound at Xinhua Hospital at Shanghai Jiao Tong University is listed as an affiliation 10 times among the retracted papers. Fudan University in Shanghai is linked to five papers, and Brandenburg University in Germany is also referenced six times, by our count. 

Yi Dong of Shanghai Jiao Tong University is an author on 10 of the retracted papers. Dong did not respond to our requests for comment. Juan Cheng, who has the same listed affiliation as Dong, is an author on six of the papers. We couldn’t find contact information for Cheng, and the ORCID link on one of the papers shows no information. 

Cell biologist Friedrich Jung of Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg in Germany is listed as an author on six of the papers. Jung did not return messages seeking comment. 

Research described in the papers covers topics from traumatic limb amputation to deep vein thrombosis to hepatocellular carcinoma, among other conditions. 

The articles have been collectively cited 228 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science; nine of the papers have received no citations. Sage took over Clinical Hemorheology and Microcirculation when it acquired IOS Press at the end of 2023. The retracted papers were primarily published between 2022 and 2025, with one published in 2020.  

Sage has retracted more than 1,500 articles from another former IOS Press journal, the Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems, for problematic peer review and other issues. The publisher was one of the first to retract problematic papers in bulk.

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