Avery Orrall

AI research journal with sham board, metrics holds researcher’s paper hostage

A journal purporting to be “cited by esteemed scholars and scientists all around the world” claims a false impact factor and attempts to charge authors a fee for withdrawing articles, Retraction Watch has learned. And the editor in chief publicly disavows any relationship with the title on his website.

The International Journal of Swarm Intelligence and Evolutionary Computation, or IJSIEC, claims to publish research on robotics, AI, “bacterial forging [sic],” bioinformatics and computing, among other topics.

A Retraction Watch reader brought the journal to our attention earlier this month. The researcher had submitted a paper to the journal but then noticed some red flags. Among them: One of the two listed editors-in-chief, Qiangfu Zhao, states on his website, “some journals are using my name to attract academic papers. I have no relation with these journals.” Zhao, a professor at the University of Aizu in Aizuwakamatsu, Japan, confirmed to us he has “no relation with this journal.”

Misconduct investigation at U.S. military university uncovers image duplication

Authors affiliated with a federal health sciences university have lost three papers this year for image duplication following an investigation by the institution. And another journal has confirmed it will retract a fourth paper by some of the same authors.

The “internal research misconduct investigation” conducted by the Uniformed Services University, or USU, in Bethesda, Md., found “several falsified or inappropriately duplicated images” and “images from previously published articles,” according to two of the retraction notices. USU, an institution focused on military medicine and part of the U.S. Department of Defense, acknowledged our multiple requests for comment about the investigation but did not provide a statement.

In January, Retraction Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act request about the investigation. The Department of Defense acknowledged our request on January 7, noting the agency has 4,552 open requests that are processed in the order in which they are received.

‘Biased’ and ‘unethical’: Journal objects to Scopus delisting

A home economics journal delisted from Scopus last year has called the decision “biased against journals from developing countries.”

Elsevier delisted the journal Nurture, published by “Nurture Publishing Group,” from the publisher’s citation database in June 2024, after indexing it for a dozen years. In an editorial published this April, Sadie Ahmad, the editorial manager for Nurture, wrote Scopus delisted the journal for three reasons: an increase in the number of scientific articles published, papers in topics beyond the scope of the journal, and an uptick of authors from different countries.

A representative from Elsevier told us Scopus’ decision was also a result of “weak quality” of papers and “low citation metrics compared to what one would expect of a journal with such history and scope.” The journal has been publishing since 2007.

Wake Forest cancer lab blames ‘honest mistakes’ for retractions

A prominent cancer research lab is up to three retractions and six corrections for “highly similar” images in papers published between 2018 and 2022.

The lab is led by Kounosuke Watabe at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Watabe holds one of three Wake Forest professorships all funded by a $2.8 million donation for cancer research in 2016.

Each of the retractions and corrections came after sleuth Kevin Patrick raised concerns about the articles on PubPeer in May 2024. Patrick, who identified instances of images in Watabe lab papers being “more similar than expected,” told Retraction Watch he wasn’t confident whether the image duplication could be attributed to misconduct. “I am never sure which is worse, misconduct or a pattern of errors. Neither seem to inspire confidence in the published results,” he said.

Watabe did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Chinese funding agency penalizes 25 researchers for misconduct

In its second batch of misconduct findings this year, the organization responsible for allocating basic research funding in China has called out 25 researchers for paper mill activity and plagiarism.

The National Natural Science Foundation of China, or NSFC, gives more than 20,000 grants annually in disciplines ranging from agriculture to cancer research. The NSFC publishes the reports periodically “in accordance with relevant regulations,” the first report, released in April, states. The organization awarded 31.9 billion yuan, or about US$4.5 billion, in project funds in 2023.

The NSFC published the results of its investigations on June 13. The reports listed 11 specific papers and 26 grant applications and approvals.

Science issues correction on a paper after repeat experiments and misconduct finding

Science has changed an expression of concern on a 2022 paper to an erratum after removing one of the coauthors — who was found to have committed misconduct — and allowing the researchers to repeat experiments.

The paper, “Structural basis for strychnine activation of human bitter taste receptor TAS2R46,” has been cited 68 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

Two months after publishing the article in September 2022, Science issued an editorial expression of concern, stating a post-publication analysis had found one figure with “potential discrepancies.”

COPE integrity officer loses 22-year-old paper for image concerns

The concerning figure from the paper, Fig. 2A, with increased contrast, courtesy of “Mycosphaerella arachidis” on PubPeer.

A journal has retracted a 22-year-old-paper whose first author is the integrity officer for the Committee on Publication Ethics over concerns about image editing that “would not be acceptable by modern standards of figure presentation.”

The 2003 paper, “A recombinant H1 histone based system for efficient delivery of nucleic acids,” was published in Elsevier’s Journal of Biotechnology and has been cited 41 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

Sleuth Sholto David, who goes by the name “Mycosphaerella arachidis” on PubPeer, raised concerns about the image in December 2023, pointing out a “[d]ark rectangle” that appeared to be “superimposed onto the image.”

Citation issues cost these 20 journals their impact factors this year

Twenty journals lost their impact factors in this year’s Journal Citation Reports, released today, for excessive self-citation and citation stacking. Nearly half of the journals on the list are from well-known publishers MDPI, Sage, Springer, Taylor & Francis and Wiley.

Clarivate releases the annual Journal Citation Reports each June. For the first time, the company excluded citations to retracted papers when calculating this year’s impact factors. Amy Bourke-Waite, a communications director for Clarivate, told Retraction Watch this change affected 1% of journals, none of which lost impact factors in 2025.

Many institutions use the controversial metric as an indicator of journal quality. And suppressing a journal’s impact factor can have negative effects on the publication and the authors who publish papers in it.

Journal corrects nearly 100 papers after authors fail to disclose they are on the editorial board

Wiley has issued a mass correction at one of its journals after finding nearly 100 papers with undisclosed conflicts of interest related to submissions by board members and relationships between authors and journal editors.

An investigation found conflict of interest issues in 98 papers published from 2020 to 2025 in Geological Journal, although the issues may have gone on before then, sleuths suggest. Nearly a third of the papers shared a single co-author — an associate editor at the journal.

That editor’s contract was not renewed, we have learned.

According to the correction notice, issued in early May, the journal had not taken “measures to manage potential conflicts of interest between authors and editors” for 98 articles.

Paper rejected for AI, fake references published elsewhere with hardly anything changed

One journal’s trash is another’s treasure – until a former peer reviewer stumbles across it and sounds an alarm.

In April, communications professor Jacqueline Ewart got a Google Scholar notification about a paper published in the World of Media she had reviewed, and recommended rejecting, for another journal several months earlier.

At the time, she recommended against publishing the article, “Monitoring the development of community radio: A comprehensive bibliometric analysis,” in the Journal of Radio and Audio Media, or JRAM, because she had concerns the article was written by AI. She also noticed several references, including one she supposedly wrote, were fake.

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