Category: Democracy and Security

In what EIC calls an ‘honest mistake,’ journal approves paper without peer reviewing it

For most researchers, having an article accepted comes with constructive feedback from editors and reviewers. But when a sociology researcher learned his article was accepted at a Taylor & Francis journal, he was surprised to find the journal had skipped the peer review process altogether. 

Martino C. submitted his article on the effects of economic instability on political ideology in Slovakia to the journal Democracy and Security on October 15. (We’ve withheld the author’s last name at his request for digital privacy reasons.) He told Retraction Watch he was hoping peer reviews would help him improve his argument. 

But on January 13, the paper was marked “Accepted” in the journal’s submission portal without feedback.

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Gender-based violence researcher now up to 10 retractions for plagiarism

A publisher has retracted all of the papers it published by a researcher in Nigeria, citing plagiarism.

The papers, all about terrorism and gender-based violence, were written by Oluwaseun Bamidele. The journal editors and the publisher, Taylor & Francis, decided to retract nine papers by Bamidele because of the overlap to other works — which he also failed to reference.

Bamidele — who also lost a paper on Boko Haram for the same reason — told us he didn’t learn about what constitutes plagiarism until his graduate studies, after he’d already written the now-retracted manuscripts:

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