Researchers in Iran have lost their 2019 paper on nanofluids after the journal learned that their list of authors included an engineer at the University of Texas who had nothing to do with the work.
The article, “Numerical study on free convection in a U-shaped CuO/water nanofluid-filled cavity with different aspect ratios using double-MRT lattice Boltzmann,” was published in Thermal Science and Engineering Progress, an Elsevier journal. The first author was Ahmad Fard, of the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at K.N. Toosi University of Technology, in Tehran.
Batting cleanup was David Ross, whose affiliation is given as the University of Texas at Austin. A David Ross — no, not the Cubs manager and former Major League Baseball catcher — was on the faculty of UT from 1966 until his retirement in 2003.
We also found David Ross’ name on two papers in the International Journal of Numerical Methods for Heat & Fluid Flow, one from 2019 and the other from 2020. Both include co-authors from Iran.
But according to the retraction notice, which is dated Nov. 4, 2020, Ross had nothing to do with the paper in TSEP:
This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief. Concern has been raised about the identity of the author “David Ross” as the listed institution has denied the affiliation of a person with this name. Further inquiry revealed that the names of the co-authors were added to the revised version of the article without notifying the handling Editor, which is contrary to the journal policy on changes to authorship.
Also, the co-authors were not able to provide a reasonable description of their contribution to the article.
As such this article represents an abuse of the scientific publishing system. The scientific community takes a very strong view on this matter and apologies are offered to readers of the journal that this was not detected during the submission process.
Apparently, the fact that “Ross” used “[email protected]” instead of a University of Texas email address wasn’t a red flag.
Dave Reay, the editor of TSEP, told us that his journal does try to verify authorship:
We do see a sheet with authors’ signatures and authors are emailed to confirm this too, as I understand.
Which of course doesn’t work if an author creates a fake email address for a co-author. But he referred other questions to Elsevier, which has not responded.
Fard did not reply to a request for comment.
Phantom authors haunt this site on occasion — remember Javier Grande? — and we have covered many cases of authors whose names appear on papers without permission.
Our headline is, of course, an homage to the 1982 film starring Al Pacino.
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Per the retraction notice, “Further inquiry revealed that the names of the co-authors were added to the revised version of the article without notifying the handling Editor, which is contrary to the journal policy on changes to authorship.” is a very common strategy in this business of solving engineering homework problems, adding the word “nanofluid”, and publishing a bad paper. I detail a similar authorship situation in Sci. Rep. here: http://retractionwatch.com/2021/02/01/journal-pulls-two-studies-that-listed-an-author-without-his-permission/#comment-1898349
Springer Nature declined to act on the case…good on Elsevier to have some backbone in this instance.
Boy the EiC really seems engaged with the journal: “We do see a sheet with authors’ signatures and authors are emailed to confirm this too, as I understand.”
Perhaps the journal could find someone who has time to focus on editorial duties. The current editor seems a bit busy, according to the list of activities on his academic site (which perhaps tellingly omits reference to the journal):
Current internal roles:
Executive Director at Edinburgh Climate Change Institute
Policy Director at ClimateXChange
University of Edinburgh PI: GCRF South Asia Nitrogen Hub (SANH)
Current external roles:
Academic Advisor on Rural Policy and Climate Change, Scottish Government
Green Jobs Taskforce, UK Government
Climate Emergency Response Group (CERG)
Climate Emergency Skills Action Plan (CESAP) Expert Group, Skills Development Scotland
Scotland’s Climate Assembly
COP26 Universities Network Steering Group
Edinburgh Climate Commission
‘Farming 1.5’ Inquiry
Scottish Water Net Zero Advisory Panel
Zero Waste Scotland Decoupling Advisory Group
NFUS Climate Change Advisory Panel
Cairngorms National Park Heritage Horizons Advisory Group
Postcode Lotteries Green Challenge Jury
via: https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/davereay/
Plus it’s possible he has an outside business: “David Reay and Associates, Whitley Bay, United Kingdom,” per the journal. Busy boy.
Iranian authors? Lattice Boltzmann? Nanofluid?
Here, one of the previous episodes.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0020740317327625
Another black hole from publisher and editorial
For what it is worth, here is another david.ross.texas retraction (correct me if it’s been already reported).
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2451904919301635
The notice is outlandishly uninformative.
The international composition of the author list is quite unusual. I know what that might mean, however, I leave the speculation part to the experienced readers.
Yes, that has been reported in our database along with a number of others: http://retractiondatabase.org/RetractionSearch.aspx#?auth%3dRoss%252c%2bDavid
Seven more ‘David Ross’ paper on International Journal of Numerical Methods for Heat & Fluid Flow have been retracted.
See:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/HFF-07-2019-0532/full/html
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/HFF-10-2019-0735/full/html
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/HFF-05-2019-0400/full/html
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/HFF-09-2019-0703/full/html
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/HFF-03-2019-0273/full/html
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/HFF-08-2019-0632/full/html
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/HFF-01-2016-0019/full/html