At the end of July, Muttukrishna Sarvananthan noticed something curious in the publications of Chulani Herath, a senior lecturer at the Open University of Sri Lanka in Nawala.
Herath is listed as a middle author on seven papers about various topics in medicine, including heart disease, stroke, and burnout among general practitioners in China.
That struck Sarvananthan, an economist in Sri Lanka, as odd. Herath is a psychosocial counselor, not a physician or expert in medicine. “How could she possibly co-author an article in medical sciences?” he wrote in one email to a journal editor, requesting the editor investigate Herath’s paper as a potential product of a paper mill.
Sarvananthan has written to the editors of the journals that published the following seven papers, requesting they investigate:
- “Consumption of fruit and vegetable and risk of coronary heart disease: A meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies,” International Journal of Cardiology, 2015
- “Off‐Hour Admission and Mortality Risk for 28 Specific Diseases: A Systematic Review and Meta‐Analysis of 251 Cohorts,” Journal of the American Heart Association, 2016
- “Patients’ Willingness on Community Health Centers as Gatekeepers and Associated Factors in Shenzhen, China,” Medicine, 2016
- “Prevalence and risk factors associated with stroke in middle-aged and older Chinese: A community-based cross-sectional study,” Scientific Reports, 2017
- “Turnover intention and related factors among general practitioners in Hubei, China: a cross-sectional study,” BMC Primary Care, 2018
- “Prevalence of burnout and associated factors among general practitioners in Hubei, China: a cross-sectional study,” BMC Public Health, 2019
- “A national survey of turnover intention among general practitioners in China,” The International Journal of Health Planning and Management, 2019
A few of the papers have statements about the authors’ contributions publicly available. The Journal of the American Heart Association says Herath was one of four authors who drafted the manuscript; the one in BMC Primary Care says Herath was one of four authors who reviewed the paper; and the one in Scientific Reports says she was one of three authors who revised the manuscript. The author statement for the paper in BMC Public Health does not list a contribution for Herath, but says “All authors contributed to writing, reviewing or revising the paper and read and approved the final manuscript.”
Herath acknowledged our email requesting comment, but did not offer one. The corresponding author on all the papers, Zuxun Lu of Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China, did not respond to our request for comment.
Staffers from five publishers have responded. Four (representing Scientific Reports, International Journal of Cardiology, Medicine, and BMC Public Health) said they would investigate further. The editor-in-chief of The International Journal of Health Planning and Management requested “more information that shows the extent to which a specific co-author did not contribute as she/he declared.”
Sarvananthan acknowledged that his reasons for suspicion were circumstantial but he argued that they were enough for the journal to investigate:
To be honest, I really do not know how much a particular co-author has contributed or not to this particular article of concern to me. However, having scrutinized the list of publications of this particular co-author…I am suspicious about her co-authorship of this particular article because of the following circumstantial reasons.
A book authored by Chulani Hearth is published by Lambert Academic Publishing, which is a well-recognized predatory publisher based in Germany.
One of her journal articles is published in a positively identified predatory journal.
Nine other articles are published in legitimate and reputed journals but with numerous other co-authors from China, where she had done her Ph.D. between 2014 and 2017.
She apparently has co-authored articles on cardiology, stroke, etc, which are obviously not her field of study or expertise. Besides, none of the 9 articles in legitimate journals have an author contribution statement publicly available.
The foregoing circumstantial evidence should be sufficient for The Journal of HealthPlanning and Management to launch an independent investigation into this matter first by writing to the corresponding author of this particular article to disclose the details of the contribution made by each co-author.
Plagiarism, publications in predatory journals, and co-authorship in articles through paper mills have become a serious menace in Sri Lankan academia in the past decade or longer.
Update, 0300 UTC, 10/25/22: The journal BMC Public Health recently informed Sarvananthan that it had completed its investigation and concluded “that there is not sufficient information to support that the article is a papermill.”
The journal did publish a correction adding Herath’s contribution:
In the original publication [1] the authors omitted to state the contribution of author Chulani Herath. The Author Contributions section should read:
YG and ZXL conceived and designed the study. YDY, CW, JXL, TTY, SH, HBX, and YYC participated in the acquisition of data. YG analyzed the data. HJ, LQL, and PQF gave advice on methodology. YG wrote the draft of the paper. CH contributed to revising the paper. All authors contributed to writing, reviewing or revising the paper and read and approved the final manuscript. ZXL is the guarantors of this work and has full access to all the data in the study and takes responsibility for its integrity and the accuracy of the data analysis. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Uh oh… as a librarian almost all my papers are on disparate areas of study. I’ve been the middle author on papers about exercise, diabetes self-management, safety in home care, sleep hygiene, wound care and more. Of course, they were all systematic reviews, so my contributions were to the search in each instance. I always read and provide edits to the paper in full, but if simply having a diverse portfolio of research as a middle author is a red flag, I’m in trouble!
I have no idea what Dr. Herath’s contribution to the papers might have been, and the fact that at least a couple are predatory certainly is a concern, but it wouldn’t surprise me if she contributed by helping to write in English, which is likely not the first language of the rest of the authors. In that case, scientists need to have a serious discussion about the role ghost writers and translators should play in communication of science. By acknowledging or giving authorship, this takes this important work out of the shadows. We need science communication to become diverse and if the ability to communicate in English is a significant barrier (and I think it is), we need to take a hard look at how we can elevate the role that professional writers, editors and translators play in that communication.
Some journals require that the “role” each author played be identified in the footnote listing the affiliations. An author whose “role” was to write/translate/edit could be so identified, without any remorse or concern.
I agree with Amanda. As a scientific content editor (substantive & developmental editing), my contributions sometimes rise to the level of authorship by ICMJE standards and I’m listed as co-author on papers that span a broad range of topics, wandering far from the field in which I received my degree. Editing English alone is not a qualification for authorship, though editors should be acknowledged by name. But when a scientific editor’s comments and suggestions contribute to an analysis or suggest a new or different interpretation of the data, we meet the first ICMJE criteria for authorship—and we obviously meet the rest.
Good content editors can do heavy intellectual lifting, which was generally rendered invisible in the old days. Our intellectual work was usually hidden in the acknowledgements if we were listed at all. Today, reporting standards surface the work of previously overlooked but key contributors. It’s possible that Herath is a fraudulent co-author, but broad interdisciplinary range is something many co-authors come by honestly, while publication in predatory journals is a legitimate red flag.
That’s nothing, Wanich Suksatan, of the faculty of nursing, HRH Princess Chulabhorn College of Medical Science, Bangkok, has authored over 30 papers on nanoscience so far this year!
At least there is a hint of scientific expertise. He is listed as an RN and PhD candidate and is named as a co-author on multiple medical and psychosocial papers. Not a small thing!
I suspect this is an internal fued. I have co-authored various papers (mostly systematic reviews and meta-analysis) where I may not be responsible for the data gathering but I mainly sort the meta-analysis part of things.
In the era where multi-disciplinary research is widely encouraged, the grief of Muttukrishna Sarvananthan may be due to his inability to compete in an ever global academia (410 citations in about 30 years of research versus 578 citation in 11 years).
Perhaps, Muttukrishna Sarvananthan would benefit from spending more time collaborating than trying to create a storm in a cup!
{https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=CYGaCwQAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate
vs https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=hnkgbMwAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate}
Systematic Review and Meta-analysis – these two words have become very popular these days. Any one without having any experience in the field can do this and publish papers on an any topic just by conducting a systematic review and/or meta-analysis. I think it is time for journals to scrutinise such approaches. I have seen publications from authors who are just first year undergraduate students providing perceptions and future directions on a topic they haven’t worked on by conducting Systematic Review/Metaanalysis. I know some of you who provided comments above disagree with traditional thoughts, one needs to take ownership of the papers being a co-author and should be ready to answer any questions on them – not just providing database or literature search.