Category: taylor and francis

Nick Wise had a prolific start to his sleuthing journey. In July 2021, the fluid dynamics researcher started looking for tortured phrases in published papers, and has since had a hand in at least 1,000 retractions. He also helped identify unique phrases for the Tortured Phrases Detector, a function of the Problematic Paper Screener that identifies signs of misconduct. Last month, Wise teamed up with other research fraud hunters in a Nature article that outlined “five essential steps to combat industrialized scientific misconduct.”

His success in calling out research misconduct helped him land a full-time job.  In January, Wise started a new position as research integrity manager at publisher Taylor & Francis. We spoke with him about how his new position will impact his career trajectory and how he plans to use his sleuthing past in his new position. 

Continue reading When a sleuth gets hired by a publisher: A Q&A with Nick Wise

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. 

Continue reading Publisher adds temporary online notifications to articles “under investigation”

Nearly two years after being warned one of its journals appeared to be the target of a paper mill operation, Taylor & Francis has retracted 80 articles that appeared in that journal.

Last June, Undark and Retraction Watch reported on the efforts of a sleuth using the name Aishwarya Swaminathan to alert Taylor & Francis and other publishers starting in April 2022 that a data scientist named Gunasekaran Manogaran allegedly runs “a research paper publishing scam” that targets special issues. Such issues appear to be particularly vulnerable to paper mills.

Another sleuth, Nick Wise, also worked to suss out the problems, and El Pais reported on the links between Manogaran and a professor in Spain in October.

Now, Acta Agriculturae Scandinavica, Section B — Soil & Plant Science has retracted 80 papers, all with a notice that specifies the name of the relevant special issue:

Continue reading Journal retracts 80 papers ID’d as paper mill products following sleuth’s report, Undark-Retraction Watch investigation

The co-editors in chief and most editorial board members of the journal Critical Public Health have resigned their roles to start a new, independent journal, citing differences with their publisher, Taylor & Francis. 

“While there are inevitable tensions for a critically oriented scholarly journal that is also a commodity marketed by a commercial publisher, over the last year or so it has become increasingly difficult to hold together these two different versions of the journal,” co-editors Judith Green of the University of Exeter in the UK and Lindsay McLaren of the University of Calgary in Canada said in a press release announcing the mass resignation. 

“It is simply a relationship that hasn’t worked out and we need to find other ways to continue the spirit of the community,” McLaren told us. 

Continue reading Editors of public health journal resign over differences with publisher

There shouldn’t have been many differences between the women recruited for the three clinical trials: All of them gave birth at the same two Cairo hospitals over a period of less than three years, and all of them were treated to prevent or manage postpartum bleeding. Three samples from this pool of patients, Ben Mol felt, should have had largely similar baseline characteristics. 

Yet, mysteriously, the women’s mean age and BMI varied markedly across the studies—from 25 to 34 years and from 25 to 29 kg/m2, respectively—as did the birthweight of their babies. 

So the researcher turned data sleuth began digging. His worries only grew. Eventually, he would come to question the integrity of nearly two dozen randomized controlled trials led by Ahmed Maged, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Egypt’s top medical school, Kasr AlAiny at Cairo University. 

Now, based in part on Mol’s findings, two journals published by Taylor & Francis have issued a retraction and nine expressions of concern for the following papers:

Continue reading Ob-gyn who called criticism ‘racist’ and ‘hate speech’ earns retraction, several expressions of concern

A retraction notice for a 2021 paper in an environmental sciences journal has us wondering if the peer review process for the publication should be declared a Superfund Site. 

The article, “Experimental study and numerical prediction of HTO and 36Cl− diffusion in radioactive waste at Téguline Clay,” appeared in Environmental Technology, a Taylor & Francis title, and was written by a group at Central South University, in Changsha. 

Evidently, little in that title was accurate. 

According to the retraction notice: 

Continue reading In which we ask: What exactly did peer review accomplish here?

We’re rounding out the week with a third post about paper mills: A Taylor & Francis journal is up to 39 retractions, 18 of which appear to have been the work of at least one such operation.

Last March, The publication, “Artificial Cells, Nanomedicine, and Biotechnology,” issued an expression of concern for 13 of the articles, after a group of data sleuths pointed out problems with the papers. 

As Science magazine pointed out at the time, the sleuths, including Elisabeth Bik, found evidence that more than 400 articles generated by the suspected mill contained fabricated images. All of the papers came from research teams based in China, they noted. 

Continue reading The mill and the loss: Journal up to 39 retractions, just under half linked to paper mills

A criminologist whose work has been under scrutiny for a year is set to have a sixth paper retracted, Retraction Watch has learned.

Last July, Justin Pickett, of the University of Albany at the State University of New York, posted a 27-page explanation of why he was asking for one of his papers to be retracted. The paper in question had been co-authored by Eric A. Stewart, a professor at Florida State University, whose work had been questioned by an anonymous correspondent.

Following pickup of the story by The Chronicle of Higher Education, that paper was eventually retracted, along with four others Stewart co-authored. But that was not the end of the tale. 

Continue reading Criminology researcher to lose sixth paper

The journal Artificial Cells, Nanomedicine, and Biotechnology has attached expressions of concern to 13 papers published in 2019 that a group of sleuths have flagged for potentially being from a paper mill.

In February, Elisabeth Bik wrote on her blog:

Based on the resemblance of the Western blot bands to tadpoles (the larval stage of an amphibian, such as a frog or a toad), we will call this the Tadpole Paper Mill.

Bik explains in her post that she and her colleagues — including pseudonymous sleuths @MortenOxe, @SmutClyde, and @TigerBB8 — had been working on a set of 17 papers that Jennifer Byrne and Jana Christopher had also been scrutinizing:

Continue reading Journal slaps 13 expressions of concern on papers suspected of being from a paper mill