A heart researcher from Italy has lost three papers because the articles duplicated work he had previously published. The retractions bring his tally to 17, all but one of which were for self-plagiarism.
The latest retractions for Renato De Vecchis were from the Journal of Clinical Medicine Research (JCMR). JCMR is published by Elmer Press and is not indexed in Clarivate’s Web of Science. De Vecchis most recently listed his affiliation as San Gennaro dei Poveri Hospital in Naples. He was previously at Elena d’Aosta, a health center in Naples. His published papers are all in cardiology research.
Richard Liu, the director and CEO of Elmer Press, told us JCMR “informed the related journals” of similarities between publications. He also said the journal never heard back from the authors but “since the contents overlapped are significant [sic],” the journal decided to retract the papers.
“Possibly these were accidents,” Liu said, but they did not get a response from the authors.
De Vecchis did not respond to our multiple requests for comment via email asking if he could provide more information and whether he agreed with the retractions.
One of the articles, originally published in 2015, was “almost the same, including all the tables and figures,” as an article published in Walsh Medical Media’s Journal of Pharmacovigilance the same year, according to the June retraction notice. Earlier this month, we wrote about another journal from that publisher that lists an editor-in-chief who disavows any relationship with the journal, charged an author a fee to withdraw an article, and published papers duplicated from elsewhere.
Another of the newly retracted papers had “significant overlap” with an article published in the International Journal of Statistics in Medical Research (IJSMR) a year earlier. As of August 6, one of the journal’s listed editors-in-chief was Danh Nguyen. Nguyen told us he is not affiliated with the journal but made “internal recommendations to improve manuscript submission review process” in 2022. “During the couple months, I did not handle any paper submission to the journal,” Nguyen said. As of August 14, Nguyen was no longer listed on the journal’s editorial board page.
The other editor-in-chief, Kartlos Kachiashvili, said IJSMR has not been contacted by JCMR to inform him of the duplication. “I do not believe any further action is required from us at this stage,” he said.
IJSMR is published by Lifescience Global, which appeared on Beall’s list of predatory publishers before the site went dark in 2017.
The third JCMR retraction was for a paper with significant overlap to another article in Springer Nature’s European Journal of Clinical Pharmacology. De Vecchis lost a paper from that journal last year for duplicating a figure from an article in JCMR that was the “central content of the two articles.”
Seven of De Vecchis’ eight 2023 retractions appeared in Minerva Medica journals. Only one of De Vecchis’ retractions was for something other than self-plagiarism. Published in Interventional Medicine & Applied Science in 2017, the paper was retracted the same year for plagiarizing a paper in BMC Cardiovascular Disorders by different authors, according to the retraction notice.
De Vecchis frequently publishes with fellow San Gennaro dei Poveri physician Carmelina Ariano. Her 13 retractions all come from papers she coauthored with De Vecchis.
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