Clarivate’s influential Web of Science database of abstracts and citations has paused coverage of new content from a collection of surgery journals, including a top-ranked title in the field, following a Retraction Watch investigation from March.
Indexation in the database is widely seen as a key scholarly imprimatur and ensures visibility in literature searches and citation counts. If a journal is removed from Clarivate’s Master Journal List following review, it loses its impact factor and manuscript submissions may plummet.
The move came just a week after our investigation, published March 12, which found mandatory citation of reporting guidelines in the International Journal of Surgery (IJS) had inflated the impact factor of the open-access title, making it more attractive to authors and readers. The hold does not appear to be mentioned on the journal websites and we were not aware of it until now.
IJS is the flagship title of IJS Publishing Group (IJSPG), a small publisher founded in 2003 by U.K. plastic surgeon Riaz Agha. Its 2022 impact factor of 15.3 placed it second in the surgery category, following JAMA Surgery.
IJS is among six IJSPG titles that have been put on hold due to concerns about “the quality of the content published in this journal,” according to information on Clarivate’s website. “The journal is being re-evaluated according to our selection criteria; new content will not be indexed during the course of the re-evaluation.”
The Dutch publisher Wolters Kluwer in 2022 bought IJSPG, whose journals until then had been published by Elsevier, another Dutch company. Agha continues to edit several of the eight titles that make up the collection today, including IJS. He did not respond to emails seeking comment.
A Wolters Kluwer spokesperson told us the firm continues to “collaborate with Clarivate as they diligently evaluate improvements to the journals,” adding that “it takes time to do it well.”
Amy Bourke-Waite, senior director of communications at Clarivate, confirmed that all of the of IJSPG journals that currently have an impact factor had been put on hold on March 19, including IJS, Annals of Medicine and Surgery, the International Journal of Surgery: Oncology, the International Journal of Surgery Protocols, the International Journal of Surgery Case Reports and the International Journal of Surgery Open.
Bourke-Waite declined to share details about the specific concerns that had prompted the move, but referred us to a blog post explaining that Clarivate may put titles on hold “when valid concerns emerge that indicate a journal may no longer meet our quality criteria, based on in-house monitoring, trusted public sources, or issues raised by the research community.”
The post continues: “We only put a journal on hold when our initial review indicates that concerns are valid and require further investigation. Based on the outcomes of re-evaluations to date, around 85% of journals put on hold are ultimately delisted.”
As we noted in our investigation, we have contacted Agha several times in the past without receiving a response, “first about the Indian paper mill iTrilon, which claimed to have connections on the editorial boards of IJSPG journals and advertised papers it guaranteed would be published in the series, later about a deeply flawed case report in Annals of Medicine and Surgery and irregular registrations in Agha’s Research Registry.”
Following the investigation, Wolters Kluwer scrapped some of its contentious citation and study-registration requirements, as we reported in April. But a bibliometrics expert said the effects would not “reverse quickly or easily.”
John Loadsman, an anesthesiologist at the University of Sydney and a journal editor, has flagged what he describes as “blatant absurdities” in more than a dozen papers in the International Journal of Surgery Case Reports on PubPeer. He told us he is “left to wonder if those papers are the tip of an iceberg that will sink the whole ship, as occurred with Hindawi.”
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