management – Retraction Watch

Business management journal holds researcher’s paper hostage

A “scholarly business and management publication” is holding a researcher’s paper for ransom, requesting the author pay to withdraw the article.

The researcher submitted a manuscript in August to the Academy of Strategic Management Journal in August, thinking he had sent it to the Academy of Management Journal. He asked to remain anonymous for fear of seeming careless “rather than recognizing the real predatory nature” of the journal.

The journal’s homepage notes it is indexed in Scopus, but it was delisted in 2021, nor is it indexed in Clarivate’s Web of Science. Its most recent volume contains five single-author articles from nonexistent universities. None of the articles has a DOI or provides an email for the author.

Legal threats, opacity, and deceptive research practices: A look at more than 100 retractions in business and management

What can studying retractions in business and management journals tell us? Earlier this year, Dennis Tourish, of the University of Sussex, and Russell Craig, of the University of Portsmouth, both in the UK, published a paper in the Journal of Management Inquiry that analyzed 131 such retractions. The duo — who were also two of three authors of a recent paper on retractions in economics — also interviewed three journal editors involved in retractions, two co-authors of retracted papers who were not responsible for the fraud, and one researcher found to have committed fraud. We asked Tourish, the author of an upcoming book on “fraud, deception and meaningless research” in management studies, some questions about the study by email.

Retraction Watch (RW): You found a “large proportion of retractions in high-quality journals.” Would you say that is consistent with findings in other fields? Continue reading Legal threats, opacity, and deceptive research practices: A look at more than 100 retractions in business and management

Management researcher with 16 retractions has new professorship

Ulrich Lichtenthaler, a management professor who has had to retract 16 papers for data irregularities, has a new position in academia.

According to a news release from the International School of Management (ISM), a business school based in Germany, Lichtenthaler has been appointed Professor of Business Management and Entrepreneurship at the Cologne campus. Lichtenthaler is also taking over as one of the directors of the Entrepreneurship Institute at ISM, which conducts research in the field.

Lichtenthaler’s name may be familiar to readers: After journals retracted more than a dozen of his articles, he resigned from a previous post at the University of Mannheim in 2015.

We emailed Lichtenthaler to ask if he had disclosed his history to his new employers; he forwarded the email to ISM’s head of marketing and sales, who told us:

Continue reading Management researcher with 16 retractions has new professorship

Management researcher admits to falsification, resigns

A business journal has retracted two papers after the corresponding author admitted he falsified his results.

David DeGeest, an assistant professor in the Department of Management and Marketing, has also resigned from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, a university spokesperson told Retraction Watch.

Last month, DeGeest confessed to the Journal of Management (JOM) that he had falsified the results in two papers in the journal—one from 2015 and one from 2016.

The papers explored strategies startups can use to increase their odds of survival. The 2015 work was highlighted in the Wall Street Journal, among other outlets; one story in Business News Daily is no longer on the site.

David Allen, the editor-in-chief of the journal, told us: Continue reading Management researcher admits to falsification, resigns

Something new: A journal publishes running tally of retractions

Here’s something we haven’t seen before: A journal based in Serbia recently began listing all the articles it has retracted, all due to plagiarism.

Although preventing plagiarism is hardly a new goal for journals, creating a web page dedicated to retractions is certainly a novel attempt. (Even the home page has a link to the page, called “Retracted Articles.”)

This past February, the Journal of Process Management – New Technologies International did exactly that. Currently, this page on the journal’s website features five papers, all retracted in 2016, along with links to notices which indicate the original, plagiarized article.

First, let’s list the notice for “Impact of shopper’s creativeness on shopping methods: A case-study of students of University of Delhi (India),” published in 2014:

Continue reading Something new: A journal publishes running tally of retractions

Got “significosis?” Here are the five diseases of academic publishing

John Antonakis is psychologist by training, but his research has run the gamut from showing kids accurately predict election outcomes just by looking at candidates’ faces to teaching charisma to people in leadership positions. Now, as the newly appointed editor of The Leadership Quarterly, he’s tackling problems in academic publishing. But his approach is somewhat unique – he sees these problems as diseases (ie, “significosis”) that threaten the well-being of the academic literature. In a new paper, he’s calling on the efforts of researchers, editors, and funders to prevent, diagnose, and treat the five diseases of academic publishing.

Retraction Watch: What prompted you to think about problems in science publishing in terms of diseases?

Continue reading Got “significosis?” Here are the five diseases of academic publishing

A new way to fake authorship: Submit under a prominent name, then say it was a mistake

4orcover Recently, the editors of a journal about management science received a submission from a prominent Dutch economist. But something didn’t feel right about it.

For one, the author submitted the paper using a Yahoo email address. So the editors contacted the author via his institutional email; immediately, the researcher denied having submitted the paper — and said it had happened before. And then things got really interesting.

The editors — Yves Crama, Michel Grabisch, and Silvano Martello — decided to run a “sting” operation, pretending to consider the paper, and even submitted their own fake reviews, posing as referees. They accepted the paper via the electronic submissions system, then lo and behold:

Continue reading A new way to fake authorship: Submit under a prominent name, then say it was a mistake

“We should err on the side of protecting people’s reputation:” Management journal changes policy to avoid fraud

Patrick Wright, via the University of South Carolina

How can academic journals ensure the integrity of the data they publish? For one journal, the key is looking deeply at statistics, which revealed crucial problems in the research of recent high-profile fraudsters such as Anil Potti. Editor-in-chief of the Journal of Management, Patrick Wright from the University of South Carolina, recently authored an editorial about how he’s taken those lessons to heart — and why he believes retractions don’t always hurt a journal’s reputation.

RW: Can you take us through the changes in the editorial policy of your journal? Continue reading “We should err on the side of protecting people’s reputation:” Management journal changes policy to avoid fraud

Authors in 2014 peer review ring lose 4 more papers each for “compromised” review

A journal is pulling additional papers authored by twin brothers for peer review issues.

After retracting three papers by Cheng-Wu Chen earlier this year for “compromised” peer review, Human Factors and Ergonomics in Manufacturing & Service Industries is now pulling four more by Chen for the same reason — and four others by his twin brother, Chen-Yuan Chen, who was a the center of a peer review ring that SAGE busted in 2014.

Cheng-Wu Chen lost 21 papers during that episode. He’s now up to 28; Chen-Yuan Chen, who also goes by Peter Chen, is now up to 43. Both are present on our leaderboard.

The notes, which appear in the March/April issue of the journal, are all identical, and also cite issues with citations:

Continue reading Authors in 2014 peer review ring lose 4 more papers each for “compromised” review

Concerns attached to three more papers by retraction-laden management researcher

Fred Walumbwa, a management researcher with ~~eight~~ seven retractions, has received three expressions of concern from two journals after he failed to provide raw data following an investigation into potential errors.

In the past, Walumbwa has said he only keeps data until his papers are published, but a lack of raw data has become a common theme in his notices, which now also include four corrections, and one other EOC (making a new total of four). There are no standard rules about how long to store raw data, but one journal that issued two of the new EOCs has since updated its submission policy to require that authors keep data for at least five years.

Walumbwa currently works at Florida International University. When concerns about the statistics were raised about five of his papers in Personnel Psychology, the journal conducted an investigation that led to flagging two of those articles, the expression of concern explains:

Continue reading Concerns attached to three more papers by retraction-laden management researcher

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