Madhulika Pathak

A company named Springer that isn’t the publisher is offering authorship for sale

The homepage for Springer Journals Online offers to “help you craft a manuscript that passes the demanding criteria of high impact journals.”

Computer scientist Richard Fateman got an email in August that was completely “out of the blue”: an offer of coauthorship in articles headed for publication in prestigious journals, in exchange for a fraction of the publication costs.

Fateman, professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, retired 18 years ago, so he was alarmed by the offer from a company called “Springer Journals Online.” He thought it was a scam or a phishing attempt to get money, he told Retraction Watch.

He replied to the email, asking “‘are you for real?’” He also talked to his colleagues at Berkeley to ask if they had ever received similar offers. “I got a response from one or two people saying they’re not entirely surprised,” Fateman said. “And, ‘isn’t it a shame that this is going on?’”

A paper suggested a paleontologist’s fossil was forged. He wants it retracted.

An artist’s reconstruction of a mosasaur first described by Nicholas Longrich and colleagues in 2021.
*by Andrey Atuchin, 2020, in: N.R. Longrich et al/Cretaceous Research 2021*

Nicholas Longrich would like to set the record straight.

The paleontologist at the University of Bath in England and his colleagues described what they believed to be a new species of marine reptile in 2021, based on a Moroccan fossil found in a mine. But in 2024, another group of researchers questioned the fossil’s authenticity, pointing out the arrangement and orientation of its teeth “most likely result from forgery” based on published photos and documented alteration in other specimens from that region.

Late last year, Longrich and colleagues published CT scans of the original fossil as well as a new specimen of the species, saying it demonstrated their discovery was genuine. Longrich told us he sent the raw CT data confirming the sample “is authentic” to The Anatomical Record, which had published the critique, seeking an expression of concern or retraction of that paper.

Lancet union declares first-ever strike over staff wages

Union members at The Lancet and its affiliated journals will go on strike Sept. 22 for one day with further action planned for the following week, after pay negotiations with parent publisher Elsevier fell apart, The Lancet’s union announced today.

The strike is the first in The Lancet’s 200-year history. Elsevier was ordered to recognize the union, a chapter of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), in September 2025, and their collective bargaining agreement was finalized in February. As part of the action the union, which represents 110 employees in various roles across several of The Lancet’s 30 journals, is also calling on members to refuse to work hours outside their contracted amount.

Negotiations on pay and support for workers began in March when the union asked for a 7.5% pay raise in the first year. According to an open letter from the union, workers’ pay had failed to keep up with inflation, leaving them “substantially worse off than they were five years ago despite their growing expertise and responsibilities.”

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