In June, a scientist researching sarcopenia came across a relevant paper about treatment for elderly patients with complications from the disease as well as type 2 diabetes. The paper was “very bad,” he told us. “It looked like someone just copied two or three times the same text.”
The scientist, who asked to remain anonymous, became even more concerned when he realized the paper, which had the word “elderly” in its title, had been published in a pediatric journal.
“I started reading other issues of the same journal and noticed that this is a widespread problem: Chinese papers about older adults being published in pediatric journals!” he said.
He suspected the problems were the work of a “careless editor.”
“I hope that no one is getting money to publish this,” he said.
The volume of the journal with the sarcopenia paper, Minerva Pediatrics, included 29 articles, of which at least eight letters to the editor described experiments and clinical trials with adult participants, according to our analysis. Two contained the word “elderly” in their titles, including the article on sarcopenia. Others concerned knee osteoarthritis, lumbar spine fractures and other conditions most often seen in geriatric, rather than pediatric, patients.
All of the authors of the out-of-scope papers were from China, most with email addresses not associated with an institution and containing seemingly random sequences of letters and numbers, which some have suggested is a sign of paper mill activity. We attempted to email several of these addresses, but our queries went unanswered.
Aside from the issue with the sarcopenia paper, we found two letters about “elderly” patients in the June 2023 edition of the journal and one in the February 2024 edition. We’ve compiled a list of out-of-scope papers included in Minerva Pediatrics.
Dorothy Bishop, a sleuth and emeritus professor of developmental neuropsychology at the University of Oxford, England, who reviewed the articles for us, noted that in many journals, letters to the editor are not peer reviewed, and are generally “not a suitable format for papers reporting results of clinical trials, which several of these articles claim to be.”
The journal, which calls itself the “most ancient international peer-reviewed journal in the field,” purports to publish “articles related to Pediatrics and all its various sub-disciplines.” The papers which fall outside of this scope “all look pretty terrible in terms of quality and I think would not survive peer review in a respectable journal,” Bishop said.
Minerva Pediatrics’ “publishing options” page says for open access, “authors will be asked to pay” an article processing charge (APC) of €1500, or €1200 for letters to the editor. Publishing for subscription access only is free.
Three other journals from the publisher, Minerva Medica, were denied impact factors by Clarivate this year due to suspicion of citation manipulation.
Cecilia Belletti, a representative from the publisher, thanked us for our email but did not respond to our questions about why research on elderly patients was included in the pediatric journal or whether her company would remove the suspect papers.
“A proper editor would be horrified to find this material in their journal and would take steps to sack the editor who let this material through,” Bishop said. “Any other reaction would be suspect.”
Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at [email protected].
The definition of child is evolving. Americans now keep their “children” on their medical insurance into middle age. This journal is just slightly ahead of its time.
This is a scientific journal so obviously we will assume that the authors, the journal reviewers are expected to be knowledgeable about the technical terms. This is unacceptable
In my STEM field, a vast number of commercial journals (especially the pay-for-play ones) are overrun with out-of-scope, low-quality, and sometimes even computer-generated papers. It’s been going on for the better part of the last decade. Although there are now more stories about this, thanks in part to RW and related sites, the editors could not care less (one can even find their defiant defense of publishing low-quality out-of-scope works on some RW comment threads!). And good luck getting a meaningful answer from publishers profiting from this. I daresay that, in 2024, one would have to be far out of the loop to be surprised or ‘horrified’ that this is happening.
I think we can still be horrified, even if sadly not surprised.