New retraction guidelines from the Committee on Publication Ethics include more specific details about when to retract a paper, many of which address paper mill activity. For instance, journals should retract articles when “authorship of the publication cannot be verified or there are serious concerns about accountability for the research,” according to the updated guidance, released today.
COPE also recommends retracting papers with “any form of misrepresentation,” including “deception; fraud (eg, a paper mill); identity theft or fictitious authorship; or undisclosed involvement of artificial intelligence (AI).”
The organization has also released a new, separate guidance for expressions of concern. Both documents reiterate the as-soon-as-possible timeframe for notices and give more specific details on what information should be included in each type of notice.
COPE chair Nancy Chescheir told Retraction Watch the organization decided to update its 2019 retraction guidelines in part due to “an uptick in the number of retractions” and “concerns raised about timeliness of retractions and the process leading up to them.” However, the most significant factor was “systematic problems with the peer review process, such as paper mills,” she said.
Paper mill activity has markedly increased in recent years. One way publishers correct the record when fraudulent papers make it through the peer review process is through mass retractions of hundreds or even thousands of papers.
While the prior guidelines listed “compromised or manipulated peer review process” as a reason for retraction, the new ones list specific ways the process may be compromised: “fake reviewers, paper mill use, or citation manipulation.”
When journals and publishers issue batch retractions for a large number of papers at once, notices should “clearly state that systematic, coordinated, and widespread manipulation of the publication process has been identified and that the article is one of a group of articles affected by the same process of manipulation.”
Chescheir said authors who were not involved in the mass fraud might sometimes have their papers swept up in the retractions. In these cases, COPE now recommends journal editors offer the chance for the article to be “re-reviewed” before the retraction notices are published.
Like the former guidelines, the new ones include a section on timeliness of retractions, with both documents stating retraction notices should be published “as soon as possible after the editor is convinced that the publication is seriously flawed, misleading,” or otherwise unreliable. The new guidelines reiterate the point at length, and list situations that should not delay retraction, including “the authors or their institutions are not cooperative or responding promptly”, a not-yet-published letter or commentary raising “serious concerns about an article,” and “the outcome of an institutional investigation.”
Andrew Grey, an associate professor at the University of Auckland, in New Zealand, and a sleuth who has identified many problematic papers leading to their retractions, told us this and other changes deemphasizing “reliance on institutional assessments of researcher behavior or publication integrity [are] welcome.” However, he said the guidance should “be stated more clearly” so it “is clear to journal staff that in the majority of cases, decisions about editorial action can be taken without waiting on the results of institutional assessments.”
But, he added, “the recommendation about timing of publication [of] retraction notices is too vague. Surely once a decision to retract is made, the notice should be published within a few weeks. Currently it can take many months.” Sometimes, journals and publishers take years to start the investigation, or process the retraction even after receiving an institutional investigation report.
Chescheir said COPE did not include a specific time frame because the length of the process of deciding whether to retract an article can vary widely. However, she noted the new EOC guidelines address the need to notify readers of a potential problem earlier in the process. This document recommends that an EOC be published if an investigation or resolution of a credible concern will take “some time (eg several months).”
The EOC guidelines also state one should be issued “if an editor of a journal determines that concerns raised about an article are substantial and credible enough to warrant alerting readers, but insufficient information is available to decide whether a correction or retraction is required.”
The guidelines lay out three possible resolutions to the original preliminary notice: no changes are needed, a correction or retraction needs to be published, or the concerns were unable to be resolved. The guidelines also still allow for the EOC to be a permanent outcome, as was the case in a recent story regarding four EOCs in PLOS One.
As we reported in July, the revised guidelines include guidance on giving credit to sleuths and readers who raise concerns about problematic papers. “If the concerns about the article were raised by a third party, their name could be included in the retraction notice, if relevant, and with permission,” the guidelines state. As our earlier story reported, while many sleuths are in favor of this type of policy, several told us it is secondary to their goal of removing unreliable papers from the literature.
Retraction notices should also reference external investigations when relevant, follow National Information Standards Organization best practices, and not be behind a paywall or other access barriers, the revised guidelines state.
“Sometimes a retraction notice will just say this paper has been retracted, if you even get that much information out of it,” Chescheir said. “It is really problematic that there’s not adherence to content recommendations regarding what should be in a retraction notice, because readers need the transparency about what the problem is with the paper.”
To create these new guidelines, Chescheir said COPE consulted editors and publishers, conducted a literature search, and looked at publishers’ research integrity pages. She said the writing group for the updated retraction guidelines included editors, publishers, individual members, and a university and research institute member. “We don’t involve [sleuths] at the front end, but certainly we anticipate we’ll get feedback from all sorts of people who are interested in this topic,” she said. “And that would be fodder for revisions, going forward.”
Grey suggested including “readers with experience in assessment of publication integrity and communicating them to journals.” He also said future guidelines could provide “linked recommendations for how journals should address integrity concerns.”
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Can we trust a person named “Chescheir?” Sounds suspicious to me. 🙂
One problem with these things is that they are only guidelines. Journals and publishers use them to hide behind rather than taking them as best practices.
Perhaps it would be better to verify authors BEFORE publication? This is not too much to ask.