On Monday, we published a story about a physicist in India who had three papers on superheavy elements retracted after others in his field began flagging his work. Hours later, a publisher decided to retract an entire volume of conference proceedings after one of the critics pointed out the researcher, H.C. Manjunatha, was responsible for the majority of its contents.
Manjunatha is listed as coordinator of the International Conference on Emerging Frontiers in Material Science and Radiation Physics, which took place in December. Manjunatha was one of four editors for the conference’s proceedings published in EPJ Web of Conferences on March 18. Of the 55 articles in the volume, Manjunatha is an author on 32.
David Boilley, a physicist at the University of Caen Normandy and researcher at GANIL, emailed EDP Sciences, which publishes EPJ Web of Conferences, on March 22 noting Manjunatha’s position as editor and the large number of papers he authored in the volume. Boilley, whom we interviewed for our story, mentioned the forthcoming article to the journal and also included a copy of his recent preprint calling out Manjunatha’s papers.
The next day, Solange Guehot, editor of the journal, responded that the publisher would withdraw the entire volume. “Naturally, HC Manjunatha and his entire team will no longer be able to publish in Web of Conferences,” she wrote in an email to Boilley.
Guehot also told Boilley the articles did not initially raise suspicion “because they did not contain ‘classic’ editorial anomalies such as, for example, manipulated quotations or blatant inconsistencies.”
Manjunatha, who is with the physics department of the Government First Grade College in Devanahalli, told us the conference organizers and EPJ Web of Conferences invited him to edit the issue. He said other authors had more than two papers published in the proceedings. Of the other three conference editors, only one was listed on a proceeding that wasn’t the preface.
Guehot told us that when the publisher informed the conference organizers they were retracting the issue, the organizers suggested the journal take “‘corrective measures’ to avoid having the volume retracted, which we naturally will refuse to do,” she said. EPJ Web of Conferences is indexed in Scopus and Clarivate’s Web of Science.
Manjunatha is named in the draft retraction notice Guehot shared. “A specific type of malpractice is involved, in particular serial publications of the same author, H.C. Manjunatha, with 32 articles in the same volume,” the draft notice reads. “We are extremely concerned by such malpractice which considerably impacts the image of our title and our Publisher’s reputation.”
“I have worked tirelessly, day and night, on a voluntary basis to contribute to the advancement of science. However, there may be typographical and representation errors,” Manjunatha told us. “I have been responding to all journal communications in a timely manner, and I am confident that these issues will be resolved—promptness and diligence always prevail.”
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