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The week at Retraction Watch featured:
- Journal updates retraction notice to include plagiarism following Retraction Watch report
- Anatomy of a retraction: When cleaning up the literature takes six years
- Former student was running a paper mill, says university
- Sage journal retracts another 400 papers
- How academic leaders should respond to shock and awe
Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 500. There are more than 55,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 300 titles. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers? What about The Retraction Watch Mass Resignations List — or our list of nearly 100 papers with evidence they were written by ChatGPT?
Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):
- “Invasion of the journal snatchers: How indexed journals are falling into questionable hands.” And a reminder about our Hijacked Journal Checker.
- Fake papers are “slowing legitimate lifesaving medical research”: Our six-month investigation with The Conversation.
- “Thousands of highly cited scientists have at least at least one retraction,” a study finds.
- “Investigating scientific misconduct is hard—especially when your supervisor is an author.”
- Thrilled to announce: “Retraction Watch retractions now in the Crossref API.”
- “Moving Open Repositories out of the Blind Spot of Initiatives to Correct the Scholarly Record.”
- “Is copied language in Whitten’s dissertation plagiarism? Experts weigh in.”
- “Why Peer Review is Outdated in the New World of Science.”
- “The misalignment of incentives in academic publishing and implications for journal reform.”
- “How should the advancement of large language models affect the practice of science?”
- “India’s ‘One Nation’ publishing agreement is transformational — but beware inequities.”
- “Reflections on the [ORI] 2024 Final Rule on Public Health Service Policies on Research Misconduct,” from two bioethicists.
- Pleased to see that the Cochrane Library is now using the Retraction Watch Database to flag for retracted papers.
- “‘Stamp out paper mills’ — science sleuths on how to fight fake research.”
- Former professors accused of misconduct “moved on with no discipline.”
- “Dean accused of plagiarism, targeted by DEI opponents, ‘exonerated.'”
- “Lifting the Veil: An Interview with Ivan Oransky” by former RW intern Ariella Reynolds.
- Science issues expression of concern for “potential data integrity issues in several figures.”
- Jeremy Berg, former editor-in-chief of Science, on impact factors, problem papers, open-access journals, and journal editor salaries: a Bluesky thread.
- “Trump freeze on communications forces medical journal to pull HHS authors’ article.” Our Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky have an article accepted to the same issue.
- A founder of the Cochrane Collaboration, which published a review recommending exercise therapy for chronic fatigue syndrome, comments on the ongoing controversy.
- “Black kitchen utensils health risk revisited after scientists discover error in study.” Our Ivan Oransky on ABC Australia.
- Researchers propose “five actionable initiatives to bolster the fight against China’s retraction crisis.”
- “Star ecologist accused of misconduct loses university post.”
- The Good Science Project launches a “program to promote investigations into research fraud.”
- “Delayed Action on Misconduct Costs Firm $4M; FCA Whistleblower Flagged Earlier Application.” A link to our coverage.
- “Double-blind peer review is detrimental to scientific integrity.”
- Researchers say “it is time to adopt a more pragmatic citation culture to ascertain a steady decline in the inadvertent citation of retracted articles.”
- “The rise of dishonesty in modern research.”
- “A Statistical Saga at a ‘Top’ Journal.” A link to our coverage of a player in the saga.
- “Preregistration of Research on Research Integrity is still Not Common,” researchers say.
- “Scientists are trapped in the chokehold of commercial publishers” with “Dutch roots.”
- “CERN scheme will pay publishers more if they hit open-science targets.”
- “Japanese university’s former v-c arrested over ‘embezzlement.’”
- “The definition of highly cited researchers: the effect of different approaches on the empirical outcome.”
Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on X or Bluesky, 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].