We write plenty of stories about lengthy investigations and long wait times for retractions. So we are always glad when we can highlight when journals act in a relatively timely fashion.
The Kaohsiung Journal of Medical Sciences, published by Wiley on behalf of Kaohsiung Hospital in Taiwan, seemed to exhibit some urgency after a sleuth raised concerns in December 2024 about a 2019 paper with problematic figures.
The sleuth, who has asked us to remain anonymous but goes by “Mitthyridium jungquilianum” on PubPeer, had pointed out similarities between the 2019 paper and another article by different authors, published in Oncotarget in 2014. One figure from each work was “more similar than expected” to each other, Mitthyridium wrote, citing ImageTwin.
Although Mitthyridium wasn’t the first to raise concerns on PubPeer — a separate comment in 2021 drew parallels between the Kaohsiung article and a retracted 2018 paper from a separate journal — the sleuth sent their concerns to the journal on December 28.
According to emails we have seen, the journal responded two days later requesting a formal report. After the sleuth refused to provide one, the research integrity office at Wiley told the sleuth on January 4 they were investigating the paper. The journal and publisher retracted the article three months later, on April 8. The retraction notice cites images that were “found duplicated in other articles published earlier elsewhere, and in some cases representing a different scientific context.”
The article has been cited 13 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.
A Wiley spokesperson told us there was no particular reason the retraction happened so quickly. “We did not expedite this investigation, rather, consider the timing quite standard for an investigation of this size,” the spokesperson said. They also noted the authors did not respond to inquiries, which could have helped the process move faster.
In the past year, the journal has retracted two other articles, one for data issues brought up by authors and one for data duplication. The journal of Kaohsiung Medical University in Taiwan, it was formerly published by Elsevier; the website notes it was transferred “back to the society” as of 2019, at which time Wiley partnered with the university to publish it.
The journal aims to “promote clinical and scientific research in the medical sciences in Taiwan, and to disseminate this research to the international community,” according to their mission statement.
Gong-En Tang, the corresponding author, did not respond to our request for comment. Tang’s most recent paper appears to have been published in 2020. It lists their affiliation as Linyi Central Hospital in China. Tang does not have an ORCID profile.
In a PubPeer comment, Rui Wang, the co-corresponding author of the article in Oncotarget, said similarities between his work and later papers “obviously indicate that the images … were copied from our paper.”
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