When PubMed got it right, Elsevier got it wrong, and Retraction Watch helped clear it up

More than 20 years after publishing a letter saying a set of papers should be retracted — and PubMed marking them as such — the journal has finally retracted the articles, following a Retraction Watch inquiry. Let’s back up. In 1998, the journal Contraception published a supplement with six articles on Implanon, a subdermal contraceptive … Continue reading When PubMed got it right, Elsevier got it wrong, and Retraction Watch helped clear it up

Elsevier removes journal from Scopus after Retraction Watch inquiry

Elsevier has removed a journal from its Scopus database after Retraction Watch inquired about its review process for the journal, whose editorial board lists fake names and digital fingerprint shows other red flags. Scientific sleuth Anna Abalkina uncovered several issues with Science of Law, which she details in a post published today. Besides editors and … Continue reading Elsevier removes journal from Scopus after Retraction Watch inquiry

Dozens of Elsevier papers retracted over fake companies and suspicious authorship changes

Since March of last year, Elsevier has pulled around 60 papers connected to companies in the Caucasus region that don’t seem to exist. The retraction notices attribute the decision to suspicious changes in authorship and the authors being unable to verify the existence of their employers. Online sleuths have also flagged potentially manipulated citations among … Continue reading Dozens of Elsevier papers retracted over fake companies and suspicious authorship changes

As a nonsense phrase of shady provenance makes the rounds, Elsevier defends its use

The phrase was so strange it would have stood out even to a non-scientist. Yet “vegetative electron microscopy” had already made it past reviewers and editors at several journals when a Russian chemist and scientific sleuth noticed the odd wording in a now-retracted paper in Springer Nature’s Environmental Science and Pollution Research.  The ludicrous phrase … Continue reading As a nonsense phrase of shady provenance makes the rounds, Elsevier defends its use

Elsevier denies AI use in response to evolution journal board resignations

The publisher of the Journal of Human Evolution says it does not use artificial intelligence in its production process, contrary to a statement issued last month by the journal’s editorial board when all but one member of the group resigned.  The statement, shared on X on December 26, noted the journal’s “joint Editors-in-Chief, all Emeritus … Continue reading Elsevier denies AI use in response to evolution journal board resignations

Evolution journal editors resign en masse to protest Elsevier changes

All but one member of the editorial board of the Journal of Human Evolution (JHE), an Elsevier title, have resigned, saying the “sustained actions of Elsevier are fundamentally incompatible with the ethos of the journal and preclude maintaining the quality and integrity fundamental to JHE’s success.”  “Elsevier has steadily eroded the infrastructure essential to the … Continue reading Evolution journal editors resign en masse to protest Elsevier changes

Exclusive: New hijacking scam targets Elsevier, Springer Nature, and other major publishers

Until recently, journal hijackers do not appear to have targeted titles from big publishers, in part because their well-known website designs made such clones easy to detect. Typically, cloned versions of journals’ websites are of low quality and don’t resemble the recognizable and professional designs of Springer Nature and Elsevier. As described in previous posts, … Continue reading Exclusive: New hijacking scam targets Elsevier, Springer Nature, and other major publishers

Elsevier investigating geology journal after allegations of pal review

Elsevier is investigating the journal Geoscience Frontiers after a PubPeer thread flagged an editorial advisor whose articles in the journal were edited by his frequent co-authors.  The editorial advisor, M. Santosh, is a professor at the University of Adelaide in Australia and a “Highly Cited Researcher” with more than 1,500 published articles, according to Clarivate’s … Continue reading Elsevier investigating geology journal after allegations of pal review

Elsevier withdraws plagiarized paper after original author calls journal out on LinkedIn

In late May, one of Sasan Sadrizadeh’s doctoral students stumbled upon a paper with data directly plagiarized from his previous work.  Sadrizadeh, a researcher at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, was the last author on “Supply-demand side management of a building energy system driven by solar and biomass in Stockholm: A smart integration … Continue reading Elsevier withdraws plagiarized paper after original author calls journal out on LinkedIn

‘Exhausting’: Author finds another’s name on an Elsevier book chapter she wrote

When Ina Vandebroek read the latest edition of Pharmacognosy, an Elsevier textbook to which she contributed a chapter for the 2017 edition, she was shocked. Although she had declined to write for the 2023 update, her chapter was still in the book, under a different author’s name. “When I first saw this, it was like … Continue reading ‘Exhausting’: Author finds another’s name on an Elsevier book chapter she wrote