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Want to earn $10k per month? Join the “journals mafia”

Is running a journal becoming too much of a drag? Just get help from a new organization that is trying to make an offer that journals can’t refuse.

On a website splashed with pictures that connote classic mob movies (Marlon Brando as The Godfather, Al Pacino, cigars), a new service called “Journals Mafia” tries to convince journals to partner with them, or even sell the publication outright.

The company appears to act as an intermediary between authors and journals — accepting articles, formatting and fixing the language, and submitting it to the journal. Since the authors pay to publish the articles, the company shares the profits with journals that publish the paper — anywhere from $1,000-$10,000 per month:

Continue reading Want to earn $10k per month? Join the “journals mafia”

Hey journals, it is possible to quickly correct the record

Even when a paper is obviously flawed, it can take years for journals to take action. Some never do. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

On April 27, a reader emailed the editors of two journals, noting that each had recently published a paper by the same group of authors that appeared strikingly similar.

Four days later, on May 1, a representative at Medicine, the journal that published the most recent version of the paper, wrote the reader back, saying the paper was going to be retracted.

Continue reading Hey journals, it is possible to quickly correct the record

Author who lied to journals about his identity slated to have four articles on vaccines retracted

An author who has published four articles about the alleged risks of vaccines — but who lied about his name and claimed an affiliation with the Karolinska Institutet — has lost one of the papers. He will also lose three more, Retraction Watch has learned.

Earlier this month, a paper in the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics claiming that the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine is linked to a higher rate of cervical cancer — the very disease it is intended to prevent — by “Lars Andersson” sparked a bit of a firestorm when a Swedish newspaper reported that Andersson was not who he said he was. The journal responded by adding a line to the paper — first published on April 30 of this year — about the subterfuge, and with an editorial about the issues the incident raised, but leaving the paper intact.

Yesterday, the journal retracted the paper, “Increased incidence of cervical cancer in Sweden: Possible link with HPV vaccination,” writing that Continue reading Author who lied to journals about his identity slated to have four articles on vaccines retracted

Two years after student loses PhD, ORI concludes he committed misconduct

The U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) announced today that a former graduate student committed research misconduct — nearly two years after his institution stripped him of his degree.

The ORI concluded that Shiladitya Sen committed misconduct in a PNAS paper (retracted six months ago), his PhD thesis, a poster presentation, and two grant applications to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Sen has agreed not to seek federal funding for three years.

A spokesperson for The Ohio State University (OSU), where Sen was based, told us its investigation wrapped up in Spring 2016, and Sen’s PhD was revoked that June. It’s not clear why it took two years for the ORI to issue its own finding; the ORI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

According to ORI’s notice, Sen:

Continue reading Two years after student loses PhD, ORI concludes he committed misconduct

U.S. government research watchdog pulls newsletter without explanation

The U.S. Office of Research Integrity has removed an issue of its quarterly newsletter, without including a public notice explaining why.

The main website for the newsletter — published since 1993 — is now missing the March 2017 edition.

A spokesperson for the agency told Retraction Watch: Continue reading U.S. government research watchdog pulls newsletter without explanation

Now-retracted chem paper’s problems “should have been noticed by the referees,” group says

Last year, chemist Marcus Tius at the University of Hawaii saw a paper describing the synthesis of some organic compounds, and was “struck by the implausibility” of the reported structures. So he joined up with some colleagues to try to replicate the data.

While Tius and his team were trying to repeat the experiment, however, in December 2017 the journal — Organic Letters — retracted the paper. The journal, published by the American Chemical Society, noted that the authors had not been able to produce crystal structures that confirm they had synthesized those compounds in particular. So Tius and his colleagues knew they couldn’t replicate the findings — but carried on their experiment anyway:

Continue reading Now-retracted chem paper’s problems “should have been noticed by the referees,” group says

University requests 20 retractions of cancer papers following probe

Santosh Katiyar

A university and medical center have requested a batch of retractions following an investigation that found 20 papers by a cancer researcher contained manipulated images.

The request, from University of Alabama, Birmingham (UAB) and Birmingham VA Medical Center, focuses on papers by Santosh Katiyar, who explored alternative approaches to treating skin cancer in animal models.

For more, see our story out today in The Scientist.

Continue reading University requests 20 retractions of cancer papers following probe

A distorted record on blood pressure drugs: Why one group is trying to clean up the literature

In 2015, a group of researchers based in Spain decided to write a review article on high blood pressure. But when they looked over eight articles co-authored by the same person, they noticed some undeniable similarities.

Over the last few years, Giuseppe Derosa, based at the University of Pavia in Italy, has racked up 10 retractions after journals determined he’d published the same material multiple times. But there’s much more to this story: The researchers in Spain (led by Luis Carlos Saiz of the Navarre Regional Health Service in Pamplona) kept digging into his publication record, and have since identified dozens of additional potential duplicates. Although the outside researchers alerted journals to the additional potentially problematic papers in 2015, most have not taken action; recently, two journals published by Taylor & Francis flagged 12 of Derosa’s articles, three of which they had been alerted about in 2015 by Saiz and colleagues.

Now, Saiz is telling his story — and why duplication of medical research matters:

Continue reading A distorted record on blood pressure drugs: Why one group is trying to clean up the literature

Sturgeon researcher nets 13 retractions for fake peer review

A fish scientist in Iran has now lost 13 papers about the properties of Sturgeon sperm — try saying that five times fast — and other ichthyological topics over concerns about faked peer review.

The three most recent retractions come from the Journal of Animal Physiology and Animal Nutrition. According to the notice:

Continue reading Sturgeon researcher nets 13 retractions for fake peer review

Caught Our Notice: A team from Harvard, Cornell, Cambridge, HHMI, and UCSF can’t reproduce a paper’s findings

What Caught Our Attention: Any time there’s an issue with a paper co-authored by researchers from such high-profile institutions as Harvard, Cornell, and the University of Cambridge, we take notice. In this case, the group — which included Laurie Glimcher, then-dean at Cornell, now president of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute — chose to retract a 2013 paper from a Cell journal after learning they couldn’t reproduce some of the experiments. Continue reading Caught Our Notice: A team from Harvard, Cornell, Cambridge, HHMI, and UCSF can’t reproduce a paper’s findings