Journal retracts paper for plagiarism, but mathematician author doesn’t agree

jmathphysThe Journal of Mathematical Physics has retracted a paper by a prolific mathematician in Turkey who doesn’t agree that he plagiarized.

Here’s the notice, for “Homotopy perturbation method to obtain exact special solutions with solitary patterns for Boussinesq-like B(m,n) equations with fully nonlinear dispersion:” Continue reading Journal retracts paper for plagiarism, but mathematician author doesn’t agree

Oops: Math journal retracts paper accepted by “accidental administrative error”

jmaaMath journal editors can add — but they can also subtract.

That’s what happened to a 2012 paper in the Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications (JMAA), “On the fractional Ostrowski inequality with uncertainty.”

Here’s the notice: Continue reading Oops: Math journal retracts paper accepted by “accidental administrative error”

Plagiarism leads to retraction of math paper

springerplusSpringerPlus has retracted a 2012 paper by a pair of Saudi mathematicians who lifted text and figures from previously published articles.

The paper, “On soft expert topological spaces,” appeared in October 2012. According to the retraction notice: Continue reading Plagiarism leads to retraction of math paper

Retraction for water researchers who ripped off dissertation

JCAMcoverA pair of engineers at Hohai University in Nanjing, China, has lost their 2012 paper in the Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics. The reason: The article, “Study of the New Leon model for concrete failure,” wasn’t theirs to publish.

According to the retraction notice (which is dated September 2013 but has already appeared in ScienceDirect): Continue reading Retraction for water researchers who ripped off dissertation

Elsevier editorial system hacked, reviews faked, 11 retractions follow

elsevierFor several months now, we’ve been reporting on variations on a theme: Authors submitting fake email addresses for potential peer reviewers, to ensure positive reviews. In August, for example, we broke the story of a Hyung-In Moon, who has now retracted 24 papers published by Informa because he managed to do his own peer review.

Now, Retraction Watch has learned that the Elsevier Editorial System (EES) was hacked sometime last month, leading to faked peer reviews and retractions — although the submitting authors don’t seem to have been at fault. As of now, eleven papers by authors in China, India, Iran, and Turkey have been retracted from three journals.

Here’s one of two identical notices that have just run in Optics & Laser Technology, for two unconnected papers: Continue reading Elsevier editorial system hacked, reviews faked, 11 retractions follow

Math paper retracted because some of it makes “no sense mathematically”

appmathlett

What do you do when a math paper that contains some “constructions and arguments [that] make no sense mathematically” gets published?

If you’re Applied Mathematics Letters, you retract the paper, “For the origin of new geometry.” Here’s the notice: Continue reading Math paper retracted because some of it makes “no sense mathematically”

You’ve been dupe’d: Catching up on authors who liked their work enough to use it again

photo by Mark Turnauckas via Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/marktee/

As we’ve noted before, we generally let duplication retractions make their way to the bottom of our to-do pile, since there’s often less of an interesting story behind them, duplication is hardly the worst of publishing sins, and the notices usually tell the story. (These are often referred to — imprecisely — as “self-plagiarism.”)

But that skews what’s represented here — boy, are there a lot of duplication retractions we haven’t covered! — and we might as well be more comprehensive. Plus, our eagle-eyed readers may find issues that we won’t see on a quick scan.

So with this post, we’re inaugurating a new feature here at Retraction Watch, “You’ve been dupe’d.” Every now and then, we’ll gather five of these duplication retractions at a time, and post them so they get into the mix, and into our category listing (see drop-down menu in right-hand column if you haven’t already). Here are the first five: Continue reading You’ve been dupe’d: Catching up on authors who liked their work enough to use it again

Iranian mathematicians latest to have papers retracted for fake email addresses to get better reviews

It’s tempting to start calling this a trend.

Three Elsevier math journals are among the latest scientific publications to be retracting papers because fake email addresses were used to obtain favorable peer reviews.

The three papers appear in two journals: “On two subclasses of (α,β)-metrics being projectively related,” in the Journal of Geometry and Physics; and “Complex Bogoslovsky Finsler metrics” and “Sasaki–Randers metric in Finsler geometry,” in the Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications. All three share authors Akbar Tayebi, of the University of Qom, Iran, and Esmaeil Peyghan, of Arak University, also in Iran.

The notices in the Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications read as follows (the EES refers to the Elsevier Editorial System): Continue reading Iranian mathematicians latest to have papers retracted for fake email addresses to get better reviews

Chinese mathematician forced to retract paper after two co-authors say they had nothing to do with work

A mathematician will be performing subtraction on his CV now that he has had to retract a 2011 paper because his co-authors never agreed to submit it with him.

Kewen Zhao, of Qiongzhou University, Sanya, China, has lost a paper in Discrete Applied Mathematics, a journal for which Zhao claims to review. (Given the circumstances, perhaps he meant Indiscreet Applied Mathematics.)

According to the notice: Continue reading Chinese mathematician forced to retract paper after two co-authors say they had nothing to do with work

Math paper retracted because it “contains no scientific content”

Have a seat, this one’s a howler.

According to a retraction notice for “Computer application in mathematics,” published in Computers & Mathematics with Applications: Continue reading Math paper retracted because it “contains no scientific content”