If you had a book retracted for plagiarism, would you submit a book proposal to the same publisher? And if you were that publisher, would you entertain said pitch?
These, dear reader, are not idle questions.
Continue reading Authors whose Springer Nature book was retracted for plagiarism solicit chapters for another
IOP Publishing has retracted a total of 350 papers from two different 2021 conference proceedings because an “investigation has uncovered evidence of systematic manipulation of the publication process and considerable citation manipulation.”
The case is just the latest involving the discovery of papers full of gibberish – aka “tortured phrases” – thanks to the work of Guillaume Cabanac, a computer scientist at the University of Toulouse, Cyril Labbé, of University Grenoble-Alpes and Alexander Magazinov, of Skoltech, in Moscow. The tool detects papers that contain phrases that appear to have been translated from English into another language, and then back into English, likely with the involvement of paper-generating software.
The papers were in the Journal of Physics: Conference Series (232 articles), and IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering (118 articles), plus four editorials.
According to IOP’s Rachael Harper, head of marketing communications, 20 of the papers were listed in the Problematic Paper Screener:
Continue reading Publisher retracts 350 papers at once
Finding papers produced by paper mills has become a major headache for many of the world’s largest publishers over the past year, and they’re largely playing catch-up since sleuths began identifying them a few years ago. But there may be a new way: Earlier this month, Adam Day, a data scientist at SAGE Publishing, posted a preprint on arXiv that used a variety of methods to search for duplication in peer review comments, based on the likelihood that paper mills “create fake referee accounts and use them to submit fake peer-review reports.” We asked Day several questions about the approach.
Retraction Watch (RW): Tell us a bit about the methods you used.
Continue reading How to find evidence of paper mills using peer review comments
Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.
The week at Retraction Watch featured:
Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 211. There are now more than 32,000 retractions in our database — which now powers retraction alerts in EndNote, LibKey, Papers, and Zotero. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers?
Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):
Continue reading Weekend reads: Paying for publication?; deeper looks at citation practices; preprints and retractions
Svein Åge K. Johnsen and Ingeborg Olsdatter Busterud Flagstad, of the Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, have been trying to publish a manuscript on the psychology of green entrepreneurship.
In January 2021, they submitted it to the International Small Business Journal, a SAGE publication. The editors rejected it without sending it to peer review. So did The Journal of Entrepreneurship, another SAGE title. So Johnsen and Flagstad submitted it to Cogent Business & Management, a Taylor & Francis title.
And then, on December 25, as perhaps the worst Christmas present ever, they saw the paper published – by someone else.
Continue reading ‘I needed a publication in order to submit my thesis’: Author admits to stealing a manuscript
MDPI was about to publish a special issue in one of its journals to fete the career of a retired dean. But after Retraction Watch informed the co-editors of the issue that the researcher, Kishor Wasan, had abruptly retired after being found to have plagiarized a 2019 book review for The Lancet, the publisher evidently decided to cancel the planned celebration.
The special issue of Pharmaceutics – here’s a Wayback Machine link – was to be “in honour of Professor Kishor M Wasan’s remarkable contributions to the pharmaceutics field.”
But now it is gone, and prompts a 404 error rather than any explanation.
Continue reading Publisher cancels special issue honoring plagiarizing dean following Retraction Watch inquiries
Yes, you read that headline right.
In January 2021, we reported that The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research (JSCR) would soon be retracting two papers because a graduate student had committed misconduct in the work.
The journal – the official research publication of the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NCSA) – did retract the papers, according to a notice posted to PubMed and on the title’s site, both dated March 2021.
But that didn’t stop one of the articles – which had first gone online in December 2019 – from appearing in the February 2022 issue of the journal, without any indication it had been retracted, as Universidad Autónoma de Madrid professor Carlos Balsalobre noticed yesterday:
Continue reading Journal retracts a paper, then publishes it in an issue 11 months later
Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.
The week at Retraction Watch featured:
Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 211. There are now more than 32,000 retractions in our database — which now powers retraction alerts in EndNote, LibKey, Papers, and Zotero. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers?
Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):
Continue reading Weekend reads: Weaponizing doubt; pharma’s lawsuit against journal dismissed; ‘misconstrued misinformation’
A 2018 study in PNAS that claimed to show a biotech company’s platform for creating immunotherapies was better than existing methods has earned an expression of concern over the reproducibility of some of its findings.
When the article appeared, STAT called “Cell engineering with microfluidic squeezing preserves functionality of primary immune cells in vivo,” a “major paper that showed more clearly why companies like Roche are so interested in using its technique.”
The technique was developed by SQZ Biotech, which was founded by MIT’s Robert Langer, a founder or co-founder of numerous biotechs including Moderna, and with whom Roche partnered in 2015.
The paper has been cited 55 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science. According to a press release announcing the work:
Continue reading Biotech’s ‘cell squeezing’ technology paper earns expression of concernWould you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.
The week at Retraction Watch featured:
Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 209. There are now more than 32,000 retractions in our database — which now powers retraction alerts in EndNote, LibKey, Papers, and Zotero. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers?
Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):
Continue reading Weekend reads: ‘Death threats, ghost researchers and sock puppets’; high levels of duplication in Russian science; DNA barcoding fraud?