In January 2022, The Oncologist switched publishers from Wiley to Oxford University Press.
Last month, the journal issued an extensive correction for one of its most popular articles, a 2020 paper that describes results of a clinical trial the authors claimed found a homeopathic intervention improved quality of life and survival for people with advanced lung cancer.
The article page that remains on Wiley’s website, however, does not reflect the recent correction.
A paper that claimed to show a homeopathic intervention improved quality of life and survival for people with advanced lung cancer has received an extensive correction two years after a research integrity watchdog asked the journal to retract the article over concerns about manipulated data, Retraction Watch has learned.
The two scientists who sounded the alarm on the paper are not satisfied with the correction, they told us.
Some journal articles on the Taylor & Francis website now bear a pop-up notification stating the papers are “currently under investigation.”
The publisher began adding the notices to articles such as this one in June, according to a spokesperson, as a way to inform readers about an ongoing investigation “so that they can exercise appropriate caution when considering the research presented.”
Like the “editor’s notes” posted on Springer Nature articles under investigation, Taylor & Francis’ pop-ups only appear on the publisher’s website, not in databases where researchers might be searching for papers.
An architecture journal’s “failure to act in a timely and proactive manner” in a case of plagiarism in a now-retracted review article has sparked the resignation of a member of its editorial board, Retraction Watch has learned.
“I am appalled that it took, essentially, from November 2022 until now, September 2024, to resolve what was a fairly straightforward matter,” Dirk H. R. Spennemann, of Charles Sturt University in Albury, Australia, wrote in a Sept. 18, 2024, email to the editor-in-chief of Buildings, an MDPI title.
But in June of that year, Marco Spada, a senior lecturer in architecture at the University of Suffolk in the United Kingdom, informed Buildings the work borrowed heavily from two previous publications without proper citation. Although many sentences had been reworded using synonyms, the plagiarism was extensive and obvious.
Spada had recognized the article, a version of which he had previously reviewed – and rejected – as a referee for Sustainability, a different MDPI journal. Elements such as the title, the order in which the authors appeared and some of the abstract had changed, Spada told us. But it was still the same paper.
“Clearly they managed to outsmart the system,” Spada said.
The journal Nature Synthesis has pulled a high-profile article describing the creation of a new type of carbon after a university investigation found some data were made up.
“The authors of the original paper claimed to have created an entirely new form or carbon, graphyne, which is fundamentally different common diamond or graphite,” said Valentin Rodionov, an assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, whose team has been investigating the now-retracted work for the past two years.
“If true, this would have been a groundbreaking discovery,” Rodionov told Retraction Watch. His team described its findings in a commentary published on September 2 in the journal.
A Springer Nature journal has rescinded the acceptance of a paper criticizing the publishing giant’s controversial retraction last year of an article that surveyed parents of children with gender dysphoria, leading an associate editor to resign, Retraction Watch has learned.
According to emails we obtained, the blocked paper was slated to appear as a commentary in a special issue of Springer Nature’s Current Psychology that aimed “to stimulate discussion of all aspects of the ‘unpublication’ of scientific articles.”
“This is the only time I’ve had an accepted paper overruled in 4 years” as an associate editor at this journal, Christopher Ferguson of Stetson University in Florida, one of two guest editors of the special issue, told us by email.
The Journal of Cellular Physiology, a Wiley title, will retract two articles by an arthritis researcher the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs found to have engaged in research misconduct, Retraction Watch has learned.
Last November, the VA published findings stating Hee-Jeong Im Sampen, formerly a research biologist at the Jesse Brown Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Chicago, faked images and inflated sample sizes in three published papers, a grant application, a presentation, and an unpublished manuscript.
Based on the findings, the VA banned Sampen, who publishes under the name Hee-Jeong Im, from conducting research for the department and requested retractions of the three publications.
Sage has retracted 467 articles from the Journal of Intelligent and Fuzzy Systems, a title it took on when it acquired IOS Press last November for an undisclosed sum.
The publisher “launched a thorough investigation” into the journal in April, according to a spokesperson, after the indexing company Clarivate “informed us about concerns relating to the quality of some of the journal’s content.”
“The investigation found that the peer review process for some articles was inadequate, leading to the retraction of these articles,” the spokesperson said.
The journal’s editor in chief, Reza Langari of Texas A&M University in College Station, resigned on June 16 “due to differences of opinion on how to proceed” with Sage’s investigation, he told Retraction Watch.
A journal that lost its impact factor in June is in the midst of a cleanup operation, issuing nearly 140 retractions so far this year.
The mass retractions began over a year after sleuths Alexander Magazinov and Guillaume Cabanac first raised concerns about the presence of suspicious citations, tortured phrases and undisclosed use of AI in the journal’s articles.
Cabanac and Magazinov have now flagged 1,850 articles from the journal, Springer Nature’s Environmental Science and Pollution Research (ESPR), with the Problematic Paper Screener, which looks for evidence of bad practices in academic papers.
A journal of the UK-based Biochemical Society is retracting 25 papers after finding “systematic manipulation of our peer-review and publication processes by multiple individuals,” according to a statement provided to Retraction Watch.
The batch of retractions for Bioscience Reports is “the first time that we have issued this many retractions in one go for articles that we believe to be connected,” managing editor Zara Manwaring said in an email.
As academic publishing grapples with its papermill problem, many firms are retracting articles by the dozens, hundreds, or even thousands after discovering foul play.
Bioscience Reports already had retracted 20 papers this year, by our count. The latest batch means the journal’s yearly total will surpass 2023, when it pulled 32 papers, and the year before, when it pulled 26.
