by publisher – Page 2 – Retraction Watch

Springer Nature psycholinguistics journal retracts over a dozen articles for authorship, peer review issues

A journal has retracted 16 papers after a whistleblower flagged it for “irregularities” in peer review, among other concerns.

The Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, a Springer Nature title, published the papers between 2021 and 2024. The articles covered research ranging from studies of the work of Haruki Murakami and Kazakh literature to English reading fluency and the teaching competence of parents of children with cochlear implants.

Thirteen of the 16 articles have been cited one to five times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science; one article has been cited 19 times, the highest of the bunch.

When PubMed got it right, Elsevier got it wrong, and Retraction Watch helped clear it up

More than 20 years after publishing a letter saying a set of papers should be retracted — and PubMed marking them as such — the journal has finally retracted the articles, following a Retraction Watch inquiry.

Let’s back up.

In 1998, the journal Contraception published a supplement with six articles on Implanon, a subdermal contraceptive implant. The papers examined the implant’s pharmacodynamics and side effects. The next year, the journal published two clinical studies of the implant, one on its effectiveness as a contraceptive and the other on its effect on lipid metabolism.

Those two studies took place at centers in Jakarta, Indonesia. Some of the study data published in the supplement also included patients at those centers.

Journal tells author it’s retracting three papers for concept that ‘violates’ law of thermodynamics

A physics journal has informed an embattled rocket scientist that it will retract three of his papers, citing concerns raised by the retraction of another of his papers last year.

All three articles appear in Physics of Fluids, published by AIP Publishing, and describe a phenomenon called “Sanal flow choking.” As we reported last year, some scientists have denounced the concept as “absolute nonsense.” The researcher who coined the phrase is the lead author on all papers, V.R. Sanal Kumar, a professor of aerospace engineering at Amity University in New Delhi.

The papers are:

Paper on “wokeness” and mental health retracted for political reasons, authors say

The authors of an article linking scores on a “wokeness” scale and mental health issues are blaming political bias for the retraction of their paper in March following post-publication peer review.

The article, “Do Conservatives Really Have an Advantage in Mental Health? An Examination of Measurement Invariance,” appeared in the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology last August. It has been cited twice, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science, one being the retraction notice.

“Following publication of this article, concerns were raised by third parties about the conclusions drawn by the authors based on the data provided,” according to the March 26 notice. After investigating, the publisher and the journal “concluded that the article contains major errors involving methods, theory, and normatively biased language,” which “bring into doubt the conclusions drawn by the authors,” the notice stated. The authors disagreed with the decision.

In a blog post, one author, Emil Kirkegaard, called the journal’s action “my first politically motivated retraction.” Kirkegaard’s studies and writings are provocative, on topics including race and IQ.

Researchers to pull duplicate submission after reviewer concerns and Retraction Watch inquiry

While doing a literature review earlier this spring, a human factors researcher came across a paper he had peer-reviewed. One problem: He had reviewed it – and recommended against publishing – for a different journal not long before the publication date of the paper he was now looking at.

Based on the published paper and documents shared with us, it appears the authors submitted the same manuscript to the journals Applied Sciences and Virtual Reality within 11 days of each other, and withdrew one version when the other was published.

And after we reached out to the authors, the lead author told us they plan to withdraw the published version next week – which the editor of the journal had called for in April but its publisher, MDPI, had not yet decided to do.

Correction finally issued seven years after authors promise fix ‘as soon as possible’

A journal has finally issued a correction following a seven-year-old exchange on PubPeer in which the authors promised to fix issues “as soon as possible.” But after following up with the authors and the journal, it’s still not clear where the delay occurred.

Neuron published the paper, “Common DISC1 Polymorphisms Disrupt Wnt/GSK3β Signaling and Brain Development,” in 2011. It has been cited 101 times, 28 of which came after concerns were first raised, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

It first appeared on PubPeer in April 2018, when commenter Epipactis voethii first pointed out figures 2 and 3 of the paper had potential image duplication.

Scopus indexed a journal with a fake editorial board and a sham archive

Editor’s note: We asked Elsevier to respond to some of the findings in this post. In response, a spokesperson told us they will now remove the journal from Scopus. See Elsevier’s response in this story.

I received a letter recently pointing me to a questionable journal indexed in Elsevier’s Scopus database. Scopus indexes many problematic and even hijacked journals, but this case is the most outrageous I have seen to date.

Scopus indexed Science of Law in July 2024. According to its profile in the database, the journal is published by the “Editorial Team of SoL.” However, “the editorial team” and many members of the editorial board are fake names and that such individuals do not actually exist. For example, the three editors listed — Alessio Miceli from the University of Alabama School of Law, Anita Steinberg from Wichita State University, and Jeffrey Robinson from McGeorge School of Law — do not have author profiles in Scopus. The universities themselves do not have anyone with these names in their directories.

Elsevier removes journal from Scopus after Retraction Watch inquiry

Elsevier has removed a journal from its Scopus database after Retraction Watch inquired about its review process for the journal, whose editorial board lists fake names and digital fingerprint shows other red flags.

Scientific sleuth Anna Abalkina uncovered several issues with Science of Law, which she details in a post published today. Besides editors and editorial board members who cannot be verified and don’t seem to exist, the journal’s history doesn’t match its publication record, early articles show signs of fabrication, and its publisher data in Scopus doesn’t match that in Crossref. Despite this, Scopus added the journal to its index last year.

To understand how these problems could have evaded reviewers at Scopus, we asked Elsevier if Scopus staff verifies editorial board members when vetting journals, and if they assess the quality and validity of articles in journals before adding them to the index.

Paper with duplicated images retracted four months after concerns were raised

We write plenty of stories about lengthy investigations and long wait times for retractions. So we are always glad when we can highlight when journals act in a relatively timely fashion.

The Kaohsiung Journal of Medical Sciences, published by Wiley on behalf of Kaohsiung Hospital in Taiwan, seemed to exhibit some urgency after a sleuth raised concerns in December 2024 about a 2019 paper with problematic figures.

The sleuth, who has asked us to remain anonymous but goes by “Mitthyridium jungquilianum” on PubPeer, had pointed out similarities between the 2019 paper and another article by different authors, published in Oncotarget in 2014. One figure from each work was “more similar than expected” to each other, Mitthyridium wrote, citing ImageTwin.

Dozens of Elsevier papers retracted over fake companies and suspicious authorship changes

One of several retraction notices noting “the existence and nature” of a company couldn’t be confirmed.

Since March of last year, Elsevier has pulled around 60 papers connected to companies in the Caucasus region that don’t seem to exist. The retraction notices attribute the decision to suspicious changes in authorship and the authors being unable to verify the existence of their employers. Online sleuths have also flagged potentially manipulated citations among the articles.

Each of the retracted papers appears to follow an identical pattern, based on the details given in the retraction notices. First, a solo author submits a paper and claims to be affiliated with a company that doesn’t appear in any business registries. During the revision process, the author adds several other authors to the paper — including new first and corresponding authors, despite no clear contribution to the original work. This behavior is typical of paper mills and authorship-for-sale schemes.

When asked by the editors, the original authors are unable to explain why they added the additional authors, nor validate the “nature” or “existence” of the companies they were claiming an affiliation with, according to the retraction notices.

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