by journal – Page 2 – Retraction Watch

Web of Science puts mega-journals Cureus and Heliyon on hold

Web of Science, Clarivate’s influential database of abstracts and citations, has paused indexation of new content from the open-access journals Heliyon and Cureus, apparently due to concerns about the quality of their articles.

Indexation in WoS or Scopus, another major bibliometric database owned by Elsevier, has become an important stamp of approval for scholarly publications worldwide and can make or break a journal.

WoS is “making a big call here, taking aim at two of the mega-journals that have grown massively in recent years,” said Nick Wise, a scientific sleuth and a researcher at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. “WoS appears to be one of the only organisations with the power to compel big publishers to act. I don’t think that’s a sign of a healthy academic publishing system, but it’s how things are currently.”

Journal retracts article for plagiarized images after trying to gag researcher who complained

The journal Cureus retracted an article for plagiarized images after questioning the motives of the researcher who said her images were taken.

The researcher, who asked to remain anonymous, first emailed Cureus, an open-access journal Springer Nature acquired in 2022, on August 1. She said she noticed images in the October 2023 paper, “Pediatric Acute Dacryocystitis and Orbital Cellulitis With Concurrent COVID-19 Infection: A Case Report,” came from a lecture she posted online and later removed.

“The images used in this article were edited and presented under a fabricated clinical scenario” and had been used without her permission, the researcher wrote in an email seen by Retraction Watch. She requested the journal retract the article. She also provided what she said were her original images, which were replicated in Figure 1 of the paper, and copied the corresponding author of the article.

Paper claiming to discover new pain syndrome retracted

Researchers who said they discovered a new disease akin to rheumatoid arthritis, but caused by pollution, are standing by their claim despite the retraction of their paper last month.

The article, “Middle east pain syndrome is a pollution-induced new disease mimicking rheumatoid arthritis,” appeared in the Springer Nature journal Scientific Reports in November 2021. The paper has been cited once, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science, and received limited press coverage.

According to the retraction notice, “post-publication peer review by an expert has confirmed the validity” of multiple concerns raised about the study. The paper did not present data to support its claims about the presumed cause for the syndrome, didn’t “conclusively” prove that MEPS is a new disease, and the bone erosions the study claimed were a hallmark of the disease weren’t backed by scans, the notice stated. Also, a figure of the paper featured a radiograph of a patient that wasn’t part of the study.

Authors – including a dean and a sleuth – correcting paper with duplicated image

The corresponding author of a paper flagged on PubPeer for an apparently duplicated image will be asking the journal to publish a correction, Retraction Watch has learned.

The paper, “The BET bromodomain inhibitor exerts the most potent synergistic anticancer effects with quinone-containing compounds and anti-microtubule drugs,” appeared in Oncotarget in 2016. Its authors include Marcel Dinger, now a dean at the University of Sydney, who has said he’s working to correct review papers that cited papermill articles, and sleuth Jennifer A. Byrne, also of the University of Sydney.

Earlier this month, an anonymous user on PubPeer pointed out areas of images in figure 6B that were “much more similar than expected.”

‘All authors agree’ to retraction of Nature article linking microbial DNA to cancer

A 2020 paper that claimed to find a link between microbial genomes in tissue and cancer has been retracted following an analysis that called the results into question.

The paper, “Microbiome analyses of blood and tissues suggest cancer diagnostic approach,” was published in March 2020 and has been cited 610 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. It was retracted June 26. The study was also key to the formation of biotech start-up Micronoma, which did not immediately respond to our request for comment.

Rob Knight, corresponding author and researcher at the University of California San Diego, also did not immediately respond to our request for comment.

Journal retracts redundant case study of same patient from different authors

Cureus has retracted a 2024 case study after learning it had published a piece about the identical patient, by authors from the same institution, just months earlier.

The paper, “Lipoma Growing on the Back for 26 Years: A Bizarre Case Report,” was published March 26 and retracted June 17. Three of the four authors are affiliated with Datta Meghe Institute of Higher Education and Research, in Wardha, India. The corresponding author, Samiksha V. Gupta, was a medical student at the institution but has since received his degree.

The notice states:

Journal investigating follow-up study that didn’t mention patients had died

While presenting a paper in journal club, neurology resident at Baylor College of Medicine, Peter Campbell, noticed a potential problem. Two infants in a 2018 paper were reported to have died, but their data also appeared in a follow-up study published two years later with no mention of them being deceased.

“It is unclear how a patient who reportedly died could be available for follow-up at 2 years,” he wrote in an email reporting his concerns to Frontiers, the publisher of the articles. The email, sent in April, went unanswered.

Nature retracts highly cited 2002 paper that claimed adult stem cells could become any type of cell

Nature has retracted a 2002 paper from the lab of Catherine Verfaillie purporting to show a type of adult stem cell could, under certain circumstances, “contribute to most, if not all, somatic cell types.”

The retracted article, “Pluripotency of mesenchymal stem cells derived from adult marrow,” has been controversial since its publication. Still, it has been cited nearly 4,500 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science – making it by far the most-cited retracted paper ever.

In 2007, New Scientist reported on questions about data in the Nature paper and another of Verfaille’s articles in Blood. Nature published a correction that year.

The errors the authors corrected “do not alter the conclusions of the Article,” they wrote in the notice.

Expression of concern coming for paper some used to link COVID-19 vaccines to deaths

The journal BMJ Public Health is placing an expression of concern on a paper it said “gave rise to widespread misreporting and misunderstanding,” namely, “claims that it implies a direct causal link between COVID-19 vaccination and mortality.”

The article, “Excess mortality across countries in the Western World since the COVID-19 pandemic: ‘Our World in Data’ estimates of January 2020 to December 2022,” appeared online June 3, and quickly attracted attention and criticism. The expression of concern is not yet live.

In their conclusions, the authors wrote:

Climate paper retracted from Science over miscalculations

The authors of a paper published in Science have retracted their article following the discovery of calculation errors.

The article,“Drought sensitivity in mesic forests heightens their vulnerability to climate change” by Robert Heilmayr of the University of California, Santa Barbara and colleagues found that in drier areas, trees are less sensitive to drought and in hotter regions with a wet climate, tree growth is expected to decrease.

It has been cited once, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. Since its publication in December, the article has been downloaded 4,641 times, posted by 154 X users, and written about by 20 news outlets and press release sites.

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