Academics affiliated with a journal that retracted a paper on predatory publishing last year — after one of the publishers mentioned in the analysis complained — have put out a letter critiquing the decision, saying the retraction “lacks justification.”
The authors of the retracted article appealed the decision to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), but lost. They republished their work in another journal last month.
As we reported last September, the Springer Nature journal Scientometrics retracted “Predatory publishing in Scopus: evidence on cross-country differences,” after receiving a letter from Fred Fenter, chief executive editor of Frontiers, one of the publishers included in the analysis, demanding the paper’s “swift retraction.” His key complaint: the article’s reliance on librarian Jeffrey Beall’s now-defunct list of allegedly predatory publishers.
Continue reading Board members decry their own journal’s retraction of paper on predatory publishers