Category: publisher error

Congratulations! Your already-published article has just been rejected

Eiko Fried

All rejection is hard to take. But, as one psychology researcher has found out, “having a paper rejected half a year after publication is something new …”

We’ll explain.

In January 2021, Eiko Fried, of the Department of Clinical Psychology at Leiden University, in The Netherlands, published an article in Psychological Inquiry titled “Lack of Theory Building and Testing Impedes Progress in The Factor and Network Literature.”

Since then, the paper has been viewed more than 2,400 times and cited a handful of times.

But on May 17, Fried received an email from the journal, which is published by Taylor & Francis, with unfortunate news: His article, according to the support administrator, was “unsuitable for publication.”

Continue reading Congratulations! Your already-published article has just been rejected

Our bads: Publisher error leads to double retractions for psych researchers

Here’s a Halloween tale that will drive authors batty. 

A psychology journal has retracted two papers from the same group of authors in Spain because it published the articles inadvertently.  But in doing so, the Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, where the two articles were never supposed to appear but did, managed to botch the retractions, too.

One of the articles, “Sudden complex hallucinations in a 14-year-old girl: schizophrenia spectrum disorders versus dissociative disorders-the influence of early life experiences on future mental health,” was published online in June. 

The other, “Abrupt and severe obsessive-compulsive disorder in an 11-year-old girl-PANDAS/PANS syndrome: an entity to be considered-management implications,” appeared in the June/July print issue of the journal. The authors were Parisá Khodayar-Pardo and Laura Álvarez-Bravos, of the Universiy of Valéncia. 

The retraction notices, which arrived in September, read identically: 

Continue reading Our bads: Publisher error leads to double retractions for psych researchers

‘Fiasco’ as publisher misses authors’ request to hold off publishing their paper on rubber gloves

The authors of a 2019 paper on rubber gloves have retracted their work after the journal to which they’d submitted their manuscript somehow missed their request to put a hold on the article. 

The paper, “Are rubber gloves marketed as accelerator-free truly free of accelerators?,” was published in Dermatitis, a Lippincott Williams & Wilkins title. The authors, led by Makenzie Pillsbury, of the University of Minnesota, had looked for traces of potential allergens in gloves. According to the abstract of the article: 

Continue reading ‘Fiasco’ as publisher misses authors’ request to hold off publishing their paper on rubber gloves

A failure at Renal Failure leads to retraction of duplicate article

Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

A kidney journal has retracted a 2019 paper by a group of researchers in China for an unfortunate own-goal. 

The article, “The relationship between hemodialysis mortality and the Chinese medical insurance type,” was first published in January in Renal Failure, a Taylor & Francis title. It appeared again in the journal nine months later. 

According to the retraction notice: 

Continue reading A failure at Renal Failure leads to retraction of duplicate article

One retraction notice says plagiarism. The other says it was an error in an algorithm. Which was it?

For the second time in a week, we’ve come across a retraction notice that gave the wrong reason for the retraction.

Last week, it was an Elsevier journal that called a plagiarized paper a duplicate of work by the same authors who’d written the original. Today, here’s the story of a chapter in a book published by Springer Nature that manages to list two different reasons for retraction.

According to one notice for “In-silico Analysis of LncRNA-mRNA Target Prediction” in: D. Reddy Edla et al. (eds.), Advances in Machine Learning and Data Science, Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing 705, the chapter was retracted for plagiarism.

But according to the other notice, the retraction happened because Continue reading One retraction notice says plagiarism. The other says it was an error in an algorithm. Which was it?

The mystery of the mistaken retraction is solved — sort of

We finally have some clarity on the case of the erroneous retraction over at the Annals of Surgical Oncology.

Last week, we reported that the journal, and its publisher, Springer Nature, were having some trouble with a retracted presentation from a 2017 cancer meeting. Turns out, the issue involved crossed wires for similar articles in the journal by the same trio of researchers.

Elizabeth Hawkins, a spokeswoman for Springer Nature, told us:

Continue reading The mystery of the mistaken retraction is solved — sort of

Oops: Springer Nature journal retracts the wrong paper

The Annals of Surgical Oncology (ASO) owes an apology to a group of researchers at two hospitals in South Florida.

Last month, the journal retracted a conference presentation about a device, from a company called Cianna Medical, that is designed to allow surgeons to home in to suspicious lumps in the breast and avoid needless damage to the surrounding tissue. According to the notice for “SAVI SCOUT RADAR – A non-wire non-radioactive localization device can be used for axillary lymph node surgery,” the authors of the study had failed to obtain ethics approval for the research, which was originally presented in April 2017 at the annual meeting of the American Society of Breast Surgeons.

Trouble is, that part about lack of ethics approval is not true.

Continue reading Oops: Springer Nature journal retracts the wrong paper

A retraction gets retracted

Last year, an emergency medicine journal retracted a letter to the editor because it didn’t include the author’s potential conflict of interest. Now, it’s had a change of heart.

Earlier this month, the Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine withdrew the retraction after determining the author, Guy Weinberg, had, in fact, provided information about his potential conflict  with his initial submission. Continue reading A retraction gets retracted

Oops: Elsevier journal retracts the wrong paper

When Saidur Rahman learned last month that his 2010 review paper about nanoparticles in refrigeration systems had been retracted, he was concerned—no one at the journal had told him it was going to be pulled.

Rahman, a professor of engineering at Sunway University in Selangor, Malaysia, had recently corrected his 2010 review in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews—specifically, in January, the journal published a two-page correction rewriting the parts of the paper that were “appear close to some materials we had included in some of our other review research.” But Rahman was not anticipating a retraction. Continue reading Oops: Elsevier journal retracts the wrong paper

“GOOD NEWS!…we were able to retract your article:” Journal

A paleontology journal has retracted a recent paper after discovering it had published the uncorrected version of the manuscript.

The mistake occurred after the authors submitted revisions to the manuscript without tracking the changes, prompting the publisher to believe nothing had been changed and publishing the previous version. The journal initially told the authors it planned to publish an erratum that described the mistake as a production error, but then retracted the paper—seemingly without consulting the authors. However, the authors said they were happy with the outcome.

Glenn Brock, an author on the Journal of Paleontology paper, told Retraction Watch: Continue reading “GOOD NEWS!…we were able to retract your article:” Journal