elsevier – Retraction Watch

The wolf in Scopus’ clothing: Another hijacked journal has indexed nearly 900 articles

A prolific hijacked journal has managed to breach the defenses of Scopus, one of the world’s leading academic databases. This time, the target is the award-winning journal Community Practitioner, the official publication of the UK-based organization Unite-CPHVA.

On July 7, 2023, I reported via 𝕏 that the journal’s homepage in Scopus had been compromised and was redirecting users to a fraudulent website masquerading as the legitimate publication.

Despite this revelation, the journal’s editorial team remained unresponsive, neglecting to issue any warnings to authors about the deceptive clone. In December 2023, Scopus took action, removing links to the homepage of the publication in an effort to combat hijacking.

Elsevier withdraws plagiarized paper after original author calls journal out on LinkedIn

In late May, one of Sasan Sadrizadeh’s doctoral students stumbled upon a paper with data directly plagiarized from his previous work.

Sadrizadeh, a researcher at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, was the last author on “Supply-demand side management of a building energy system driven by solar and biomass in Stockholm: A smart integration with minimal cost and emission,” published in September 2023 in Energy Conversion and Management.

The paper with matching data, “Optimizing smart building energy systems for sustainable living: A realistic approach to enhance renewable energy consumfaption [sic] and reduce emissions in residential buildings,” appeared online as an “article in press” in Elsevier’s Energy and Buildings in May.

‘Exhausting’: Author finds another’s name on an Elsevier book chapter she wrote

When Ina Vandebroek read the latest edition of Pharmacognosy, an Elsevier textbook to which she contributed a chapter for the 2017 edition, she was shocked. Although she had declined to write for the 2023 update, her chapter was still in the book, under a different author’s name.

“When I first saw this, it was like somebody hit me on the head with a hammer and everything that I’d worked for all my life was put into question,” Vandebroek, an ethnobotanist and senior research fellow at the University of the West Indies (UWI) in Kingston, Jamaica, told Retraction Watch. “This shakes my foundation of what I think science should stand for.”

The situation arose when one of the textbook’s editors, Simone Ann Marie Badal, a researcher at UWI, asked if Vandebroek wanted to revise her chapter for the new edition. Vandebroek declined, assuming her chapter would be omitted from the book.

Journal hijackers still infiltrate Scopus despite its efforts

Last December, Elsevier’s Scopus index deleted all links to journal homepages in response to the widespread issue of journal hijacking, when a legitimate title, website, ISSN, and other metadata of a journal are taken over without permission.

Scopus has been a major target. I’ve cataloged 67 cases since 2013 of hijacked journals penetrating the database. I found 23 profiles of journals that contained links to a cloned version, and 33 cases of content from the cloned version of a journal that had not been peer reviewed appearing in the profile of the legitimate journal, while 11 did both.

Since the deletion of all homepage links in the profiles of journals in Scopus, how journal hijackers would adapt their shady business practices has been unclear. We assumed they would continue hijacking new journals, would they continue to target Scopus, given they could index only unauthorized content?

Now, we have evidence hijacked journals remain in the database and continue to infiltrate it.

Editor and authors refuse to share data of paper containing alleged statistical errors

Last July, David Allison and his students identified what they considered to be fatal errors in a paper that had appeared in Elsevier’s Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice.

The authors of the article, led by Sergio Di Molfetta, of University of Bari Aldo Moro in Bari, Italy, used a cluster randomized controlled trial, but did an improper statistical analysis, according to Allison’s group.

In August, Allison, dean of Indiana University’s School of Public Health in Bloomington, and his colleagues requested the authors’ data.

Then they hit a wall.

Elsevier journal issues 73 expressions of concern for manipulated peer review

An Elsevier journal has expressed concern over 73 papers with evidence of manipulated peer-review and rigged citations.

Last July, we reported that Masoud Afrand, a former member of the editorial board of Engineering Analysis with Boundary Elements, had been linked to paper mill activity. At the time, Alexander Cheng, the journal’s editor in chief said Afrand had been asked to step down due to “unethical publication conduct.” (For other coverage of the journal since then, see this post by Maarten van Kampen and Alexander Magazinov.)

Cheng told Retraction Watch the journal is investigating the “temporary” expressions of concern. “Findings will be published, and actions will be taken, once investigations are completed,” he said.

Elsevier investigating papers after IEEE finds ‘self-plagiarism’

Following a complaint from a reader, editors at the U.S.-based publisher Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) determined the researchers behind two decade-old papers had committed “self-plagiarism,” charges the authors deny, Retraction Watch has learned.

However, IEEE passed the buck on to Elsevier, which published one of the articles a month after IEEE had published the other. Elsevier, in turn, said it is wrapping up its investigation and will make the conclusions public “once final.” And one of the authors said a corrigendum is in the works.

The studies share three authors, including last author Li-Qun Zhang, a professor in the Department of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Science at University of Maryland School of Medicine, and both focused on movement of the knee as it relates to people with osteoarthritis.

Exclusive: Elsevier journal COPE threatened with sanctions will retract four more articles

The journal a publication ethics watchdog threatened with sanctions for taking years to retract articles will pull four more related papers, Retraction Watch has learned.

Last July, the Committee for Publication Ethics (COPE) sent a warning letter to Elsevier regarding 10 papers by Yoshihiro Sato and Jun Iwamoto, who hold positions four and six on our leaderboard of retractions, that the publisher had said it would retract three and a half years ago.

As we reported previously, seven of the papers were retracted from Journal of the Neurological Sciences in December 2023.

Following our reporting on COPE’s letter to Elsevier, the publisher has decided to retract the remaining three articles, plus a letter regarding one of the retracted papers, according to emails seen by Retraction Watch.

Exclusive: COPE threatens Elsevier journal with sanctions for ‘clear breakdown’ before seven retractions

An Elsevier journal has retracted seven articles by a prolific data fabricator – three and a half years after the publisher said it would retract 10 of his papers, and five months after the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) threatened the journal with sanctions for the delay.

As we previously reported, the Journal of the Neurological Sciences had decided by June 2020 to retract 10 articles by Yoshihiro Sato and Jun Iwamoto, who are currently in positions four and six on our leaderboard of retractions. But the papers remained intact until December 2023, when seven were retracted. The remaining three are still unmarked.

“We have no idea why it took so long,” said Andrew Grey, of the University of Auckland, in New Zealand, who with colleagues Alison Avenell and Mark Bolland has scrutinized the work of Sato and Iwamoto. The group’s efforts have led to more than 100 retractions, but publishers have yet to assess a significant number of papers about which they have raised concerns.

Elsevier’s Scopus deletes journal links following revelations of hijacked indexed journals

Scopus has struck all links to the homepages of journals it indexes, Elsevier announced earlier this month. The move follows revelations that content from dozens of hijacked journals had been included in the database.

In a December 18 blog post, Scopus – which many universities and government agencies around the world use to create journal “whitelists” where authors are encouraged or even paid to publish – explains its rationale:

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