Nanotech researcher SK Sahoo notches fifth retraction

Nanotech researcher SK Sahoo, whom as we reported in February lost four papers from Acta Biomaterialia for what the journal called “highly unethical practices,” has actually retracted five papers from that journal.

According to a notice for “Enhanced cellular uptake and in vivo pharmacokinetics of rapamycin loaded cubic phase nanoparticles for cancer therapy” that appears in the June issue along with the other four:

This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy).

This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief due to highly unethical practices, which include serial self plagiarism, data manipulation and falsification of results found across the following papers by Sanjeeb Kumar Sahoo:

• Acta Biomaterialia Volume 6, Issue 8, August 2010, Pages 3120–3131. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.actbio.2010.02.010.
• Acta Biomaterialia Volume 7, Issue 1, January 2011, Pages 355–369. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.actbio.2010.08.010.
• Acta Biomaterialia Volume 7, Issue 10, October 2011, Pages 3656–3669. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.actbio.2011.06.015.
• Acta Biomaterialia Volume 8, Issue 2, February 2012, Pages 704–719. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.actbio.2011.10.022.
• Acta Biomaterialia Volume 8, Issue 7, July 2012, Pages 2670–2687. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.actbio.2012.03.048.

One of the conditions of submission of a paper for publication is that authors declare explicitly that their work is original and has not appeared in a publication elsewhere. Re-use of any data should be appropriately cited. As such this article represents a severe abuse of the scientific publishing system. The scientific community takes a very strong view on this matter and apologies are offered to readers of the journal that this was not detected during the submission process.

The paper has been cited nine times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.