A group of mathematicians in Iran have had a second paper retracted, and if we may, neither of the notices adds up.
Here’s the notice: for the new paper, in the Journal of Inequalities and Applications:
The manuscript [1] has been retracted by the editor as a request of one of the authors (Dumitru Baleanu). He realized that the version submitted by the corresponding author was not in the final form. The authors were advised to resubmit their paper after making necessary corrections.
Three of those authors — Allahviranloo, Salahshour, and Avazpour, who was the corresponding author — were co-authors of a a 2012 paper in the Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications that was accepted because of an “accidental administrative error.” Baleanu — who has faculty appointments in Romania, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, was not an author of that paper and did not respond to our requests for comment.
The journal’s editor, Ravi Agarwal, tells Retraction Watch:
As far as I know the retractions of the papers in JIA and JMAA are not connected with each other.
During the proofreading of the paper in JIA one of the authors found mistakes and I advised him
to retract it and submit later the revised version.
The last time we wrote about the Journal of Inequalities and Applications involved a paper by a different group that was retracted, the notice said vaguely, because it “contains some ethical problems.”
According to mathscinet, Dumitru Baleanu has published 51 articles in 2013. No wonder he can’t keep track of things anymore.
He is small fries compared to editor Ravi Agarwal though: according to mathscinet Agarwal has 1218 publications. Of these 11 are jointly with Dumitru Baleanu, all published in 2010 or later.
They are part of a group of people around Agarwal who publish enormous amounts of articles. Judging from the couple of articles from this group that I’ve read, their work consists mostly of nonsense.
Did you check his record in 2020
You can not believe your eyes…
Actually, I was suprised to find about 30 hits on SpringerOpen associated with Dr. Baleanu:
http://www.springeropen.com/search/results?terms=Dumitru+Baleanu (including this retraction).
However, despite this Springer prowess, I find it irritating when “professors” and “doctors” at research institutes have incomplete, messy and out-of-date resumes (CVs): http://academic.cankaya.edu.tr/~dumitru/ Instead of traveling between Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Romania, maybe Dr. Baleanu should spend a bit more time working on his professional profile to show the world what he’s been up to in publishing from 2010-2013. His InTech profile says it best: http://www.intechopen.com/profiles/105623/Dumitru-Baleanu, although quite a few papers at DOAJ.org.
He serves on the editor board of several suspect (or “predatory”, according to the Beall list at http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/) journals, including:
http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/journal/editorialboard.aspx?journalid=141
http://www.sciepub.com/journal/pmc/EditorialBoard
http://www.math.bas.bg/~fcaa/AddressesEB.pdf
http://ijmrs.com/EditorialBoard.aspx
http://ijocta.balikesir.edu.tr/index.php/files/about/editorialTeam
http://fcaj.webs.com/editorial_board.htm
http://fcag-egypt.com/Journals/EJMAA/EJMAA_Editorial_Board.html
http://www.diogenes.bg/fcaa/AddressesEB.pdf
http://ijocta.com/editorial.html
http://www.shaker.de/Online-Gesamtkatalog-Download/2013.12.02-20.03.11-27.114.66.189-rad125A4.tmp/3-8322-7797-8_INH.PDF
http://jcscm.net/cms/page.php?id=8
http://w3.balikesir.edu.tr/~ikucukkoc/dokumanlar/ijoctataslakJuly2011.pdf
http://www.eudoxuspress.com/images/EB–JOCAAA–8–7–12.pdf
http://www.frdint.com/fundamental_journal_mathematical_physics_edit.html
http://www.nonlinearscience.com/journal_2218-3892.php
Some papers with work on Caputo derivatives:
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/228611530_ON_FRACTIONAL_HAMILTONIAN_SYSTEMS_POSSESSING_FIRST-CLASS_CONSTRAINTS_WITHIN_CAPUTO_DERIVATIVES
Baleanu D., Agrawal O.P., Fractional Hamilton formalism within Caputo’s derivative (2006) Czechoslovak Journal of Physics, 56 (10-11), pp. 1087-1092
http://iopscience.iop.org/1402-4896/80/5/055101;jsessionid=6558486405040C52E1ADC46B305AF6F1.c2
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S100757041100058X
http://computationalnonlinear.asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/article.aspx?articleid=1475708
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/amp/2013/954015/ (the “academic editor” here is his co-author in several papers/books, i.e., a serious conflict of interest)
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/aaa/2012/632681/ (the “academic editor” here is another of his co-authors in several papers/books, i.e., a serious conflict of interest)
http://www.rrp.infim.ro/2013_65_2/art02Rostamy.pdf
http://www.advancesindifferenceequations.com/content/2013/1/21
Actually, coincidentally or not, several of his co-authors are also on several of the same editors boards…
How can he be on so many boards and do effective editorial work and publishing? Lack of sufficient overview are bound to happen, as in this case…
He appears to have a preference for this publisher (http://www.worldscientific.com; enter his name into the Search function), with about 15 papers there.
Definately, an interesting case study in terms of several aspects: editor boards, predatory publishing, efficiency of mentoring, triple institutional addresses in all recent papers (i.e., how does this factor into the funding / salary and impact factor scoring system). Is each institute in each country, for exmaple, giving him a financial remuneration based on the IF score of the journals?
Most of Baleanu’s papers are repetitions of previous papers. And, indeed, sometimes they are retracted since they propose the same material https://www.hindawi.com/journals/complexity/2020/5047054/
This is a further retracted paper in Baleanu’s list https://www.hindawi.com/journals/aaa/2013/212769/
Is this the same Prof Baleanu who is coauthor of the Atanana-Baleanu fractional derivative which has been referred to in several hundred papers on fractional calculus?
Addendum: I have now read the other thread
(http://retractionwatch.com/2021/02/03/mathematician-ranked-as-clarivate-highly-cited-researcher-has-third-paper-retracted/) and realise the answer to the question is “yes”, and also that I misspelled Prof. Atangana’s name.
What’s going on here is truly dreadful.
Due to the amazing number of papers, Baleanu is becoming of interest for the Turkish press as well, see https://www.sozcu.com.tr/2022/yazarlar/sultan-ucar/akademide-the-end-6915946/ (an automatic translator can help)