Ellie Kincaid

Journal retracts 31 papers, bans authors and reviewers after losing its impact factor

A journal that lost its impact factor and spot in a major index this year has made good on a promise to retract dozens of papers with “compromised” peer review.

Genetika, a publication of the Serbian Genetics Society, did not receive an updated impact factor this year after Clarivate, the company behind the closely-watched but controversial metric, identified signs of citation stacking, a practice in which authors or journals seem to trade citations. Clarivate also dropped Genetika from its Web of Science index for failing to meet editorial quality criteria.

Clarivate’s actions followed a blog post by scientific sleuth Elisabeth Bik about what she called the “Iranian Plant Paper Mill, which included 31 papers published in Genetika.

BMJ retracts article about effect of UK sugar tax after authors find error

The British Medical Journal has retracted an article that found UK households bought 10% less sugar in the form of soft drinks after the government started taxing the manufacturers on the sugar in their products.

The authors of the paper found an error in their analysis when following up on the work, and republished a corrected version – with less flashy results – in BMJ Open.

The original article, “Changes in soft drinks purchased by British households associated with the UK soft drinks industry levy: controlled interrupted time series analysis,” appeared in March 2021. It has been cited 84 times in the scientific literature, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science, as well as by media outlets and by policy documents for the UK government and World Health Organization.

Wiley to stop using “Hindawi” name amid $18 million revenue decline

Wiley will cease using the beleaguered Hindawi brand name, the publisher announced on an earnings call Wednesday morning. Wiley plans to integrate Hindawi’s approximately 200 journals into the rest of its portfolio by the middle of next year.

Problems with Hindawi, the open access publisher that Wiley acquired in 2021, have cost the company $18 million in revenue in its latest financial quarter compared to the same quarter of last year, Wiley also disclosed. Hindawi’s journals have been overrun by paper mills and published “meaningless gobbledegook,” in the words of one sleuth, leading to thousands of retractions, journal closures and a major index delisting several titles.

In the current fiscal year, Wiley expects $35-40 million in lost revenue from Hindawi as it works to turn around journals with issues and retract articles, Matthew Kissner, Wiley’s interim president and CEO, said on the earnings call. The company expects revenue to begin to recover in its next fiscal year, he said.

Elsevier investigating articles linked to controversial French researcher

The publisher Elsevier is investigating an unspecified number of articles by authors affiliated with a French research institute for concerns about “the appropriate conduct of research involving human participants.”

According to a “Publisher’s Note” that appeared November 9 in Elsevier’s New Microbes and New Infections, “concerns have been raised about a number of articles” published in the journal by researchers affiliated with the Institut Hospitalo-Universitaire Méditerranée Infection (IHU-MI) in Marseille.

The journal and Elsevier’s “Research Integrity and Publishing Ethics Centre of Expertise” are investigating the allegations “by confidentially consulting with the authors and, where necessary, liaising with the institution where the studies took place,” the note said. It continued:

Purdue agrees to pay feds back $737,000 for grant submissions with fake data

Purdue University has reached a settlement with the federal government to pay back grant money the institution received through applications submitted with falsified data, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Indiana.

The settlement resolves allegations under the False Claims Act related to the case of Alice C. Chang (who also uses the name Chun-Ju Chang), a former associate professor of basic medical sciences at Purdue’s College of Veterinary Medicine in West Lafayette, In. Inside Higher Ed reported first on the settlement.

Last December, the U.S. Office of Research Integrity found Chang had faked data in two published papers and nearly 400 images across 16 grant applications. As we reported then:

Professor who sued employer for discrimination refiles after judge dismissed his suit

A professor at the University of Pittsburgh who sued the institution for racial discrimination and retaliation has refiled his suit after a federal judge dismissed his claims.

As we’ve previously reported, Moses Bility, an assistant professor of infectious diseases and microbiology in the university’s School of Public Health, sued the school earlier this year.

Among many claims of racial discrimination, Bility alleged the school’s response to a 2020 paper he published and later withdrew that proposed jade amulets may prevent COVID-19 was discriminatory. (In the process of our previous reporting on the article, Bility accused Retraction Watch of racism.)

According to Bility’s complaint, Pitt officials demanded an investigation of his research, which found he “did not violate any academic integrity standard.” However, at a departmental town hall meeting over Zoom, presenting the investigation’s findings, “students in Defendant Pitt’s School of Public Health called Dr. Bility derogatory names, such as stupid, retarded, unintelligent, etc.” Bility later received two emails “from anonymous individuals who Dr. Bility assumes came from the Defendant Pitt community” that included racial slurs.

Auburn PhD student faked data in grant application and published paper, feds say

A former PhD student at Auburn University in Alabama relabeled and reused images inappropriately in a grant application, published paper, and several presentations, a U.S. government watchdog has found.

The Office of Research Integrity says Sarah Elizabeth Martin “engaged in research misconduct by intentionally or knowingly falsifying and/or fabricating experimental data and results obtained under different experimental conditions,” according to a case summary posted online.

The published paper, “The m6A landscape of polyadenylated nuclear (PAN) RNA and its related methylome in the context of KSHV replication,” appeared online in advance of publication in RNA in June 2021. The journal retracted the article last year, with the following notice:

Authors hire lawyer as journal plans to retract their article on pesticide poisoning

A public health journal intends to retract an article that estimated how many unintentional pesticide poisonings happen each year worldwide, Retraction Watch has learned.

In response, the authors hired a lawyer to represent them in contesting the retraction, and maintain the journal’s decision “undermines the integrity of the scientific process.” This is the second time within a few months that the journal retracted an article through a process authors said was problematic.

‘Super Size Me’: What happened when marketing researchers ordered a double retraction?

A year after the authors of two papers contacted the marketing journal where they had been published requesting retraction, the journal has pulled one, but decided to issue a correction for the other.

In April, we reported that the Journal of Consumer Research was investigating “Super Size Me: Product Size as a Signal of Status,” originally published in 2012, and “Dynamics of Communicator and Audience Power: The Persuasiveness of Competence versus Warmth,” published in 2016.

The authors had asked to retract the papers in October 2022 after other researchers found inconsistencies in the statistical calculations of the “Super Size Me” paper and could not replicate the results. The article had been cited nearly 200 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. It attracted attention from The New York Times and NPR, among other outlets, which linked the findings to the rise in obesity in the United States. An analyst also found issues in the 2016 paper, which has been cited 71 times.

When we published our previous story, Carolyn Yoon, the chair of the journal’s policy board and a professor of management and marketing at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business, told us the board was still waiting on a report from the special committee investigating the matter. “We hope to have a decision by the end of this month,” she said in April 2023.

Exclusive: Whistleblower fired after raising concerns about journal articles on LinkedIn

A business school in Pakistan has fired a marketing professor after finding he had “damaged the repute” of the university and its scholarly journal, Retraction Watch has learned.

In a LinkedIn post, Muhammad Mohsin Butt, the now-fired professor, shared a picture of the table of contents of a 2015 issue of Business Review, published by the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), in Karachi. The contents listed seven case studies authored by two other professors at the school:

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