Springer Nature has launched a new agriculture journal under the troubled Cureus brand. As part of its launch, the publisher invited at least one researcher with irrelevant specialities to join its editorial board, Retraction Watch has learned.
The new journal comes after Clarivate’s Web of Science delisting the original and long-embattled Cureus Journal of Medical Science in October for concerns about article quality.
The flagship Cureus was founded in 2009 by John Adler Jr., a Stanford University neurosurgeon, as an open-access journal for clinicians who didn’t have grants. Springer Nature acquired the journal in December 2022. In 2024, the publisher launched Cureus Journals — open-access journals on engineering, computer science and business — using the brand name.
On November 15, the journal sent a sensory biologist an invitation to “apply for a position on our esteemed Editorial Board as an Associate Editor” for its latest addition, the Cureus Journal of Agriculture and Food Science.
“Your expertise in agriculture and food science is highly regarded, and your research contributions have significantly advanced the field,” the email reads. Springer Nature launched the new journal in December, and its editorial board is currently comprised of five scientists, one each from Brazil, USA, Jamaica, Turkey and China, according to the journal’s webpage.
Four days after sending the invite, Springer Nature sent an email noting the invitation “was mistakenly delivered to individuals outside its intended audience due to a system glitch,” the email reads.
A spokesperson from the new journal told us CJFS was “editorially independent and separate” from the Cureus Journal of Medical Science. “As with the launch of any new journal, it was developed over a period of time in response to clear demand from the research communities we serve, providing a focused venue underpinned by robust quality controls.”
The researcher who received the email asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, but called the request “troubling.”
“I’ve invested a lot of time, effort, and public money publishing papers and book chapters through Springer and the value of this investment crashes if readers don’t trust that all of this work has been vetted by qualified reviewers and editors,” the researcher told us.
Cureus promotes its speedy publication but has been criticized for publishing low-quality studies and hosting “channels” that allow questionable organizations to hand-pick their own editors. In August, Cureus eliminated author suggestions for peer reviewers in an attempt to decrease potential conflicts of interest.
Cureus’ publication rate has remained steady since they were delisted, but the loss of a journal’s impact factor has historically meant researchers are less likely to submit manuscripts to the periodical.
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