Avery Orrall

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.

Journal tells author it’s retracting three papers for concept that ‘violates’ law of thermodynamics

A physics journal has informed an embattled rocket scientist that it will retract three of his papers, citing concerns raised by the retraction of another of his papers last year.

All three articles appear in Physics of Fluids, published by AIP Publishing, and describe a phenomenon called “Sanal flow choking.” As we reported last year, some scientists have denounced the concept as “absolute nonsense.” The researcher who coined the phrase is the lead author on all papers, V.R. Sanal Kumar, a professor of aerospace engineering at Amity University in New Delhi.

The papers are:

‘Anyone can do this’: Sleuths publish a toolkit for post-publication review

For years, sleuths – whose names our readers are likely familiar with – have been diligently flagging issues with the scientific literature. More than a dozen of these specialists have teamed up to create a set of guides to teach others their trade.

The Collection of Open Science Integrity Guides (COSIG) aims to make “post-publication peer review” more accessible, according to the preprint made available online today. The 25 guides so far range from general – “PubPeer commenting best practices” – to field-specific – like spotting issues with X-ray diffraction patterns.

Although 15 sleuths are named as contributors on the project, those we talked to emphasized the project should be largely credited to Reese Richardson, the author of the preprint.

Researchers to pull duplicate submission after reviewer concerns and Retraction Watch inquiry

While doing a literature review earlier this spring, a human factors researcher came across a paper he had peer-reviewed. One problem: He had reviewed it – and recommended against publishing – for a different journal not long before the publication date of the paper he was now looking at.

Based on the published paper and documents shared with us, it appears the authors submitted the same manuscript to the journals Applied Sciences and Virtual Reality within 11 days of each other, and withdrew one version when the other was published.

And after we reached out to the authors, the lead author told us they plan to withdraw the published version next week – which the editor of the journal had called for in April but its publisher, MDPI, had not yet decided to do.

Correction finally issued seven years after authors promise fix ‘as soon as possible’

A journal has finally issued a correction following a seven-year-old exchange on PubPeer in which the authors promised to fix issues “as soon as possible.” But after following up with the authors and the journal, it’s still not clear where the delay occurred.

Neuron published the paper, “Common DISC1 Polymorphisms Disrupt Wnt/GSK3β Signaling and Brain Development,” in 2011. It has been cited 101 times, 28 of which came after concerns were first raised, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

It first appeared on PubPeer in April 2018, when commenter Epipactis voethii first pointed out figures 2 and 3 of the paper had potential image duplication.

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