by country – Page 3 – Retraction Watch

Exclusive: Paper-mill articles buoyed Spanish dean’s research output

Last year, a professor and dean at a university in Spain suddenly began publishing papers with a multitude of far-flung researchers. His coauthors, until then exclusively national, now came from places like India, China, Nepal, South Korea, Georgia, Austria, and the United States.

How these unlikely collaborations began is not entirely clear. But a six-month Retraction Watch investigation, part of which is published here as a companion piece to a longer article appearing today in Science, suggests an unsavory possibility: The dean, Dionisio Lorenzo Lorenzo Villegas of the faculty of health sciences at Universidad Fernando Pessoa-Canarias, in Las Palmas, bought his way onto the papers – something he partly admits.

At least six of the seven journal articles Lorenzo published last year had been previously advertised for sale by the Indian paper mill iTrilon. Based in Chennai, this underhand operation sells authorship of “readymade” publications to scientists “struggling to write and publish papers in PubMed and Scopus-Indexed Journals,” according to a WhatsApp message its scientific director, Sarath Ranganathan, sent to prospective clients last summer. Ranganathan also claimed to have connections at journals that allowed him, in many cases, to guarantee acceptance of the manuscripts he would send their way.

Studies claiming Islamic practices protect against disease and sexual harassment retracted

A researcher in Turkey has lost seven papers about Islamic practices that he managed to publish in journals typically dedicated to childhood diseases.

Hüseyin Çaksen, of Necmettin Erbakan University, published the articles in the Journal of Pediatric Neurology, the Journal of Child Science, and the Journal of Pediatric Epilepsy, all Thieme titles. Feyza Çaksen is co-author of two.

The seven papers are:

Journals going rogue, authors beware

Pleading emails requesting papers are regular visitors to one’s inbox. These unsolicited and flattering requests promise rapid publication and tempt authors to part with their work. Even master’s and doctoral students, after graduation, receive sweet-talking requests to publish their dissertations as a book, a book chapter, or as a paper. Predatory journals and publishers are easy to spot and ignore at these low ends.

The danger lies with well-established and efficient predatory publishers. These ‘efficient’ publishers hide in the open on allowlists, such as South Africa’s Department of Higher Education and Training (DHETs) list of approved journals, and reputable indices such as Scopus and the WoS. They embellish their websites with claims of peer review and even state that they comply with requirements set by the Committee on Publication Ethics. Their websites tick all the boxes, providing a strong veneer of an authentic scholarly journal.

One of my colleagues alerted me to a suspected predatory publisher. I looked into the case and thought it sensible to share my results, with the hope of sensitising postgraduate students and fellow authors.

Psychology professor earns retractions after publishing with ‘repeat offenders’

A psychologist in Australia has earned a pair of retractions after publishing several papers with international coauthors suspected of authorship fraud, Retraction Watch has learned.

Kelly-Ann Allen, an associate professor at Monash University, in Clayton, and editor-in-chief of two psychology journals, declined to comment for this article.

The retraction notices, both in Frontiers journals, cite an investigation by the publisher confirming “a serious breach of our authorship policies and of publication ethics.”

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.

Exclusive: Editor caught plagiarizing resigns as more concerns emerge

A radiology professor in France who plagiarized others’ work in a review article has resigned from his role as deputy editor of a medical journal amid new concerns about his publications, Retraction Watch has learned.

The professor, Romaric Loffroy of CHU Dijon Bourgogne, was first and corresponding author of the offending review, which included large amounts of text from two earlier papers without appropriate citation, as we reported last month.

When confronted with evidence of the plagiarism, Loffroy put the blame on an alleged undisclosed ghostwriter, then proceeded to tone down the offense, saying he wouldn’t mind it if his own work had been plagiarized.

‘A travesty’: A researcher found guilty of misconduct by federal U.S. government responds

“These findings are unjustified.”

That’s how a biologist at the Jesse Brown Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Chicago described the conclusions of a federal investigation that found she had faked images and inflated sample sizes in published papers and a grant application. The biologist, Hee-Jeong Im Sampen, has been banned from conducting VA research.

Sampen, also a research professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago, said that “any errors that occurred involved discrete erroneously-placed figures or images” that “in no way undermine our basic conclusions and findings.”

Calling the episode a “long and hard battle for me,” Sampen sent us these comments:

US VA scientist banned from agency research for faking data

A research biologist at the Jesse Brown Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Chicago faked images and inflated sample sizes in published papers and a grant application, the federal agency has determined.

Hee-Jeong Im Sampen, also a research professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Illinois, Chicago, “engaged in research misconduct by intentionally, knowingly and/or recklessly falsifying/fabricating data” in three published papers, an unpublished manuscript, a poster presentation, and a grant application for VA funding, according to a Federal Register notice.

Sampen, who publishes under the name Hee-Jeong Im, is corresponding author on all of the published papers the VA identified. The articles, which also list an affiliation with Rush University Medical Center, are:

My journal was hijacked: an editor’s experience

At the beginning of February 2023, I discovered that the Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems (SJIS) had been hijacked. As editor-in-chief of the publication, I had been contacted by an author confused by receiving both an acceptance letter and a desk rejection for her manuscript. I had rejected the paper because it did not align with our editorial policy. Upon investigation, the acceptance letter turned out to have been issued by cybercriminals attempting to charge her for publication in what she thought was SJIS but was in fact a fraudulent website posing as the journal.

Journal hijacking is a growing problem and a threat to the entire scientific community. Hijacked journals are scam websites that impersonate legitimate journals and attempt to take over their brand. A list including hundreds of these fake sites can be found at the Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker. By stealing the brand, web domain, or the serial number used to identify a publication, cybercriminals try to lure researchers into paying for publications. The problem is in part attributable to increased pressure on researchers to publish their work in journals indexed in Scopus, Elsevier’s abstract and citation database.

Researchers of all experience levels fall prey to such scams. This susceptibility often stems from the tendency to be off guard when communicating with seemingly authentic and trustworthy academic journals, particularly when links to these journals are found on otherwise credible bibliographical databases.

In the case that led to the discovery of the SJIS hijacking, the researcher who was swindled described the experience as harrowing, making her question whom she could trust. She also ran into trouble at her university, which required her to have two publications in Scopus-indexed journals to advance her career.

Paper on homeopathy for ADHD retracted for ‘deficiencies’

A paper touted as “the first systematic review and meta-analysis” of research on the effects of homeopathy for attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has been retracted more than a year after critics first contacted the journal with concerns.

The article, “Is homeopathy effective for attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder? A meta-analysis,” appeared in Pediatric Research, a Springer Nature title, last June. It has not been cited in the scientific literature, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science, but Altmetric, which quantifies the online attention papers receive, ranks the paper in the top 5% of all articles ever tracked.

The original paper concluded:

Individualized homeopathy showed a clinically relevant and statistically robust effect in the treatment of ADHD.

However, the retraction notice, dated September 20, detailed four “concerns regarding the analysis of the articles included in the meta-analysis,” and concluded:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: