wolters kluwer lippincott – Retraction Watch

Journal founded by plastic surgeon touts studies of products he’s tied to – including one that has been retracted

*An illustration of a cell secreting exosomes. Meletios Verras/iStock*

In a February 2018 editorial, Rod Rohrich, a plastic surgeon and the former president of the World Association of Medical Editors, blasted predatory journals for “the damage that these illegitimate open access journals do to the reputation of legitimate, credible ones.”

Two years later, he wrote about how his team at Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery–Global Open, the journal he founded in 2013, had demonstrated to authors and readers that they had created a rigorous peer-review process and were “advancing patient safety and outcomes and elevating the science of plastic surgery globally.”

But an investigation by Retraction Watch raises questions about the way Rohrich, who is now editor emeritus at the journal, has promoted preliminary and sometimes misleading research about products to which he has financial ties. That includes exosomes, which are often derived from stem cells and have increasingly been touted — with limited evidence — for skin care, hair loss and wound healing.

Major citation index put surgery journals on hold following Retraction Watch investigation

Clarivate’s influential Web of Science database of abstracts and citations has paused coverage of new content from a collection of surgery journals, including a top-ranked title in the field, following a Retraction Watch investigation from March.

Indexation in the database is widely seen as a key scholarly imprimatur and ensures visibility in literature searches and citation counts. If a journal is removed from Clarivate’s Master Journal List following review, it loses its impact factor and manuscript submissions may plummet.

The move came just a week after our investigation, published March 12, which found mandatory citation of reporting guidelines in the International Journal of Surgery (IJS) had inflated the impact factor of the open-access title, making it more attractive to authors and readers. The hold does not appear to be mentioned on the journal websites and we were not aware of it until now.

Publisher changes citation, registration policies following Retraction Watch investigation

*Wolters Kluwer global headquarters in the Netherlands*

The Dutch publisher Wolters Kluwer has scrapped some of its citation and study-registration requirements at a top-ranked surgery journal founded by the U.K. plastic surgeon Riaz Agha, Retraction Watch has learned.

The move follows our investigation last month that found mandatory citation of reporting guidelines developed by Agha and published in the International Journal of Surgery (IJS) had inflated the impact factor of the open-access title, making it more attractive to authors and readers.

A blanket requirement to register all human studies before manuscript submission, contrary to recommendations from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, appeared to serve another of Agha’s business interests: a paid research registry he founded in 2015.

Controversial editorial practices boost plastic surgeon’s publishing empire

In the summer of 2022, a researcher in Indonesia submitted a case report to Annals of Medicine and Surgery, one of several open-access journals founded and edited by Riaz Agha, a plastic surgeon and publisher in London. The manuscript, Agha responded, needed various changes to be considered for publication.

Among them: It should cite Agha’s paper on how to write surgical case reports, published two years earlier in the highly ranked International Journal of Surgery (IJS), the plastic surgeon’s flagship publication.

“Thanks Sir,” the Indonesian researcher replied. “I’ve added [the reference] to the manuscript.”

Although practices vary, the journals Agha founded aren’t alone in requiring authors to follow, and sometimes even cite, reporting guidelines. But a conflict of interest can arise when an editor demands authors reference guideline papers published in the editor’s own journals – as Agha does in his instructions to authors, reporting guidelines and editorial correspondence.

Publisher flags more than 120 papers three and a half years after learning of problems

What started as a small editorial conundrum several years ago has turned into an expression of concern for dozens of papers in a medical journal, thanks to the work of an Australian physician and scientific sleuth.

In February 2022, we wrote about the decision by publisher Wolters Kluwer to retract a table that was missing in a paper in Medicine. In the end the journal pulled the whole article, which described a protocol for a clinical trial, because its authors had “not responded to multiple requests.”

The story left one reader intrigued. “I’ve never seen anything like that before,” said John Loadsman of the University of Sydney, an anesthesiologist and journal editor. “I thought, I’ve got to have a look.”

Journal tags ‘impossible’ case report with short erratum

Last August, a reader alerted the editor of a medical journal to a recent case report “riddled with irreconcilable contradictions, medically impossible claims, fictional terminology, and ethical lapses.”

The paper, about a woman who allegedly suffered an aortic aneurysm rupture three days after giving birth, stated that written “informed consent was obtained from the patient for publication.” But the woman died less than two hours after arriving in the emergency room, according to the report.

“If she did not survive, she could not have provided consent post-event,” the concerned reader pointed out in an email to Riaz Agha, editor-in-chief of Annals of Medicine and Surgery, which published the case report in April.

‘Tin Man Syndrome,’ five other case studies retracted following Retraction Watch coverage

*A comparison of the images and an overlay, provided by a sleuth.*

A journal has retracted a study on ‘Tin Man Syndrome’ plagiarized from a decade-old April Fools’ joke — which the author now admits was fake.

On August 15, we wrote about a “rare case report” published in Medicine in which authors claimed they had encountered a case of “ectopia cordis interna” and described an asymptomatic man with his heart located in his abdomen. Sleuths believed the case report plagiarized images from a 2015 satirical paper describing a condition of the same name.

A week later on August 22, Medicine, published by Wolters Kluwer, retracted the paper and five others — all published this year — with shared authors. None of the papers have been cited, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

The retracted papers are:

‘Tin Man Syndrome’ case plagiarized from hoax, sleuths say

On April Fools’ Day 10 years ago, radiologist Matt Skalski took part in a website’s annual challenge to prank the radiology community by posting the case of a man with “ectopia cordis interna,” or “Tin Man Syndrome.” Unlike the fictitious metal character from the Wizard of Oz, Skalski’s satirical patient had a heart — in his abdomen.

Now a group of researchers say they encountered the disease in real life, in a 22-year-old patient they claim has “no significant medical history.”

The researchers based in Iraq published their “rare case report” in Medicine in July.

Editors won’t retract talc and cancer article J&J says is false in court

A journal will not retract a paper linking use of talc-based baby powder to cancer, despite legal pressure from the pharmaceutical giant that made the product.

A lawyer representing a unit of Johnson & Johnson in May asked editors of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine to retract a paper on cases of mesothelioma associated with cosmetic talc, following the court-ordered release of the identities of the people described in the article.

The lawyer alleged many of the patients had other exposures to asbestos than cosmetic talc, rendering the article’s fundamental claims “false.”

Bad, Medicine: Journal publishes doubly-brutal retraction notice

A journal has retracted a paper it published earlier this year for pretty much every sin under the sun, scoring an own-goal in the process.

The article, “Effects and safety of tanreqing injection on viral pneumonia: A protocol for systematic review and meta-analysis,” was led by Yue Qiu, of the Beijing University of Chinese Medicine and appeared in Medicine on September 11.

The tl;dr version of this post: We have questions.

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