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“Common wisdom,” according to the authors of a new piece in Nature, “assumes that the hazard of predatory publishing is restricted mainly to the developing world.” But the authors of the new paper, led by David Moher of the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, found that more than half — 57% — of the 2,000 articles published in journals they determined were predatory were from high-income countries. In fact, the U.S. was second only to India in number of articles published in such journals. We asked Moher, who founded Ottawa Hospital’s Centre for Journalology in 2015, a few questions about the new work.

Retraction Watch (RW): Your paper comes out on the heels of a Bloomberg story showing that Big Pharma researchers are also publishing in predatory journals. Does all of this suggest that our understanding of who publishes in predatory journals is incomplete, or even wrong? Continue reading Predatory journals: Not just a problem in developing world countries, says new Nature paper

Researchers from The Ohio State University and The Scripps Research Institute are retracting a 2013 paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences after they uncovered data irregularities.

The retraction notice for “Somatic hypermutation maintains antibody thermodynamic stability during affinity maturation,” will appear online on Sept. 5. The paper purported to find clues about what makes antibodies stable at different temperatures. In a press release issued at the time of publication, corresponding author Thomas Magliery, of The Ohio State University, said the paper might help pharmaceutical companies make better antibody-based drugs. It has been cited 36 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.

At some point — we’re not exactly sure when — the authors discovered that the antibody stability data was suspect. According to the notice: Continue reading PNAS retracts paper linked to ex-Ohio State researcher who had chemistry PhD revoked

A researcher whose work has come under repeated scrutiny has retracted a 2008 paper for “errors that occurred in the construction” of various figures.

Carlo Croce, the corresponding author of the newly retracted paper, has been dogged by misconduct accusations for years — as recently described in the New York Times. His employer, The Ohio State University, has recently re-opened an investigation into his work. Seven of his papers have now been retracted, and fourteen have been corrected for image and text issues such as manipulation, duplication, and errors, as well as two others earning expressions of concern.

Here’s the retraction notice for “Fhit Interaction with Ferredoxin Reductase Triggers Generation of Reactive Oxygen Species and Apoptosis of Cancer Cells,” in the Journal of Biological Chemistry: Continue reading Carlo Croce, OSU cancer researcher under investigation, retracts paper

Last year, Boris Ratnikov was reading a paper and saw a familiar image.

He quickly realized: The image was from a 2012 paper he’d written, but wasn’t cited. The 2016 Cell Metabolism paper he was reading had copied a figure from his 2012 PLOS ONE paper without referencing it. 

In September 2016, Ratnikov, who is based at Sanford-Burnham-Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, in La Jolla, California, emailed an editor at Cell Metabolism to express his concern about the duplication and omitted citation.  

Although the journal told us it “carefully investigated Dr Ratnikov’s concerns,” the editors ultimately did not think the literature needs correcting.

Does failing to cite a paper constitute plagiarism? Continue reading When is a citation not enough?

A psychiatry journal has retracted a 2011 paper exploring the use of ketamine to treat patients with severe depression following an investigation at Yale University.

According to the retraction notice, Yale determined that the paper, published in the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology, did not accurately describe the research. But the study’s lead author, Gregory Larkin, says he believes the retraction “is wholly unnecessary, serving neither patients nor science.”

Continue reading Ketamine-depression paper retracted following investigation at Yale