Category: duplication retractions

Researchers in the United States and Singapore have lost a 2016 article in Science Advances after some of the group learned that one of their colleagues appears to have used duplicated images in the work.

The article, “A universal cooperative assembly-directed method for coating of mesoporous TiO2 nanoshells with enhanced lithium storage properties,” was written by Bu Yuan Guan, then of the School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, along with colleagues at that institution and Ju Li, of the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

The paper has been cited 167 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science. 

According to the retraction notice: 

Continue reading Nanotech paper retracted for duplicated images

Possession is nine-tenths of the law — at least, it seems, for one journal editor, who is refusing to retract a study despite learning that one of its images previously appeared in another journal. The reason? The other study has been removed from the web. 

The paper is among 40 articles in Construction and Building Materials flagged by a whistleblower who goes by the pseudonym Artemisia Stricta. The whistleblower says that most of the issues are serious, and are:

Continue reading Editor declines to correct paper with duplicated image after earlier study disappears

Here’s a retraction notice after our own hearts. 

Brain Research Bulletin, an Elsevier journal, has retracted a 2017 article which duplicated a substantial amount of previously published papers by some of the same authors. But unlike many journals, which merely point out the overlap, BRB explains to readers why the copying matters. 

The article, “Erythropoietin rescues primary rat cortical neurons from pyroptosis and apoptosis via Erk1/2-Nrf2/Bach1 signal pathway,” was written by Rui Li, Li-Min Zhang and Wen-Bo Sun, anesthesiologists at Cangzhou Central Hospital in China. 

According to the notice: 

Continue reading Why duplicate publications matter: A retraction notice goes above and beyond

If you’re looking for more evidence that researchers are flooding the zone with COVID-19 papers that do little to advance the state of the science, we present Psychology, Health & Medicine. 

The journal, a Taylor & Francis title, in April published “Mental health burden for the public affected by the COVID-19 outbreak in China: Who will be the high-risk group?,” by a pair of authors in China. The researchers submitted their manuscript on March 19, received acceptance on April 6 and saw the work published on April 14.

Evidently, that wasn’t enough time to run a plagiarism check — or, as you’ll see, other due diligence — because now the journal has retracted the article for being a duplicate of two other papers in different journals. The move came after a staffer at Elsevier — a competing publisher — alerted a portfolio manager at Taylor & Francis about the issue.

In part, PHM can be considered the victim of what looks to be a scheme that took advantage of gaps in the ability to check manuscripts prior to publication. 

Continue reading Researchers publish the same COVID-19 paper three times

A group of researchers in China is teetering on the edge of losing a paper because they have apparently tried to publish it three times.

Our story starts in Turkey, home to Taner Kemal Erdag, the editor in chief of Turkish Archives of Otorhinolaryngology. In August 2018, Erdag received a submission titled “Increased maternal serum placental growth hormone variant in pregnancies complicated by otosclerosis.” The corresponding author on the work was Ruiying Chen, an ear, nose and throat specialist at The First Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University. 

Three weeks later, Chen contacted Erdag and asked to withdraw their article. Request denied. Erdag told us:

Continue reading An attempt at a triple play seems likely to result in a retraction