exclusive – Page 4 – Retraction Watch

Exclusive: Cardiologist in Pakistan continued publishing after journal shown evidence he was running a paper mill

A cardiologist in Pakistan has been selling coauthorship of his research papers to scientists, particularly medical students, who were not involved in the work, Retraction Watch has learned. Several of his articles were published after the journal learned of his underhand activities.

Jahanzeb Malik, of the Rawalpindi Institute of Cardiology, publishes in a variety of journals, including Current Problems in Cardiology and Cardiology in Review, with a number of co-authors on each study.

However, not all of these authors contributed to the work. Malik, who is also a member of the Cardiovascular Analytics Group, an international network of researchers, runs a WhatsApp messaging group titled “Research Associates,” where he posts about articles he is working on and offers authorship “slots” in exchange for money, messages shown to Retraction Watch reveal. He has advertised on the “United States Medical Licensing Examination Pakistan” Group Facebook page, writing that he runs the group to “help students and other doctors in doing medical research and writing research papers.”

Going by the username “Darklord” on WhatsApp, Malik charges up to $300 for a first-author position. Less prominent positions on the manuscript can be bought for around $150. Malik has since changed his username to “Dr. Jahanzeb Malik” on the app.

Exclusive: Physician in India who coauthored review with US profs is running a paper mill

A recent review article whose authors included two assistant professors at universities in the United States was written by a physician in India who is running a paper mill, Retraction Watch has learned.

“Current Status and Emerging Trends in Colorectal Cancer Screening and Diagnostics” appeared last year in a special issue of Biosensors, an MDPI title. The article came to our attention because it matched an ad posted by the Indian paper mill iTrilon, as we reported earlier this year; some of the author names appeared on other iTrilon publications as well.

The two assistant professors – Yuguang Liu of Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and Ajeet Kaushik of Florida Polytechnic University in Lakeland – have not previously been tied to paper-mill publications and denied any knowledge of the ad.

Exclusive: Embattled dean accused of plagiarism in NSF report

Erick Jones, the dean of engineering at the University of Nevada in Reno, appears to have engaged in extensive plagiarism in the final report he submitted to the National Science Foundation for a grant, Retraction Watch has learned.

The $28,238 grant partially supported a three-day workshop that Jones and his wife, Felicia Jefferson, held for 21 students in Washington, DC, in April 2022 titled “Broadening Participation in Engineering through Improved Financial Literacy.” Jefferson received a separate award for $21,757.

Jones submitted his final report to the agency in May 2023. Retraction Watch obtained a copy of that report through a public records request to Jones’s previous employer, the University of Texas at Arlington, and identified three published sources of extended passages he used without citation or quotation marks.

Exclusive: Elsevier to retract paper by economist who failed to disclose data tinkering

A paper on green innovation that drew sharp rebuke for using questionable and undisclosed methods to replace missing data will be retracted, its publisher told Retraction Watch.

Previous work by one of the authors, a professor of economics in Sweden, is also facing scrutiny, according to another publisher.

As we reported earlier this month, Almas Heshmati of Jönköping University mended a dataset full of gaps by liberally applying Excel’s autofill function and copying data between countries – operations other experts described as “horrendous” and “beyond concern.”

Heshmati and his coauthor, Mike Tsionas, a professor of economics at Lancaster University in the UK who died recently, made no mention of missing data or how they dealt with them in their 2023 article, “Green innovations and patents in OECD countries.” Instead, the paper gave the impression of a complete dataset. One economist argued in a guest post on our site that there was “no justification” for such lack of disclosure.

Exclusive: Elsevier journal COPE threatened with sanctions will retract four more articles

The journal a publication ethics watchdog threatened with sanctions for taking years to retract articles will pull four more related papers, Retraction Watch has learned.

Last July, the Committee for Publication Ethics (COPE) sent a warning letter to Elsevier regarding 10 papers by Yoshihiro Sato and Jun Iwamoto, who hold positions four and six on our leaderboard of retractions, that the publisher had said it would retract three and a half years ago.

As we reported previously, seven of the papers were retracted from Journal of the Neurological Sciences in December 2023.

Following our reporting on COPE’s letter to Elsevier, the publisher has decided to retract the remaining three articles, plus a letter regarding one of the retracted papers, according to emails seen by Retraction Watch.

Exclusive: Mayo, Florida profs among authors of article tied to Indian paper mill

Two assistant professors at universities in the United States are coauthors of a review that appears to have been advertised for sale by the Indian paper mill iTrilon, a Retraction Watch investigation has found.

One of the professors, Yuguang Liu of Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., is also guest editor of the MDPI special issue in the journal Biosensors in which the review was published last year. The other professor, Ajeet Kaushik of Florida Polytechnic University, in Lakeland, sits on the editorial boards of Biosensors and several other titles from MDPI, Elsevier, Wiley, Springer Nature and other publishers.

An MDPI representative said Liu, who declined an interview request, had not been involved in editorial decisions regarding the paper. Meanwhile, Kaushik acknowledged his work on the article had sprung from a LinkedIn message from a researcher in India who, as we reported last week, has been offering co-authorship in return for help getting his articles published.

“This is sad,” Kaushik told us by email, adding that he had not seen “any red flags” when he agreed to collaborate on the review.

Exclusive: Paper-mill articles buoyed Spanish dean’s research output

Last year, a professor and dean at a university in Spain suddenly began publishing papers with a multitude of far-flung researchers. His coauthors, until then exclusively national, now came from places like India, China, Nepal, South Korea, Georgia, Austria, and the United States.

How these unlikely collaborations began is not entirely clear. But a six-month Retraction Watch investigation, part of which is published here as a companion piece to a longer article appearing today in Science, suggests an unsavory possibility: The dean, Dionisio Lorenzo Lorenzo Villegas of the faculty of health sciences at Universidad Fernando Pessoa-Canarias, in Las Palmas, bought his way onto the papers – something he partly admits.

At least six of the seven journal articles Lorenzo published last year had been previously advertised for sale by the Indian paper mill iTrilon. Based in Chennai, this underhand operation sells authorship of “readymade” publications to scientists “struggling to write and publish papers in PubMed and Scopus-Indexed Journals,” according to a WhatsApp message its scientific director, Sarath Ranganathan, sent to prospective clients last summer. Ranganathan also claimed to have connections at journals that allowed him, in many cases, to guarantee acceptance of the manuscripts he would send their way.

Exclusive: COPE threatens Elsevier journal with sanctions for ‘clear breakdown’ before seven retractions

An Elsevier journal has retracted seven articles by a prolific data fabricator – three and a half years after the publisher said it would retract 10 of his papers, and five months after the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) threatened the journal with sanctions for the delay.

As we previously reported, the Journal of the Neurological Sciences had decided by June 2020 to retract 10 articles by Yoshihiro Sato and Jun Iwamoto, who are currently in positions four and six on our leaderboard of retractions. But the papers remained intact until December 2023, when seven were retracted. The remaining three are still unmarked.

“We have no idea why it took so long,” said Andrew Grey, of the University of Auckland, in New Zealand, who with colleagues Alison Avenell and Mark Bolland has scrutinized the work of Sato and Iwamoto. The group’s efforts have led to more than 100 retractions, but publishers have yet to assess a significant number of papers about which they have raised concerns.

Exclusive: MDPI journal undergoing reevaluation at Scopus, indexing on hold

Elsevier’s Scopus database has paused indexing content from Sustainability, an MDPI journal, while it reevaluates whether to include the title, Retraction Watch has learned.

Please see an update on this post.

Other MDPI titles were reevaluated in 2023, and its mathematics journal Axioms is no longer included in Scopus’ nearly 30,000 titles. Clarivate also delisted two MDPI journals, including the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, from its Web of Science index earlier this year, meaning those journals will no longer receive impact factors.

Universities and funders use Scopus to create “whitelists” of journals in which authors are encouraged to publish, so removal from the index can influence submissions.

In 2022, Norway removed Sustainability from its list of journals that researchers get credit for publishing in, and Finland followed suit at the beginning of 2023. In the announcement of its decision, the Finnish Publication Forum wrote:

Exclusive: Researcher outs Indian university’s publishing scam after it fails to pay him

On March 12, a senior administrator at a university in India sent a business proposal to a prolific economist in Ethiopia. If he joined the school’s stable of adjunct professors, the administrator promised, easy money could be made.

All the economist had to do was “add our affiliation for incentives in your papers,” explained Lakshmi Thangavelu, dean of international affairs at Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical Sciences (SIMATS), in Chennai, in a written exchange.

“Surely I will do that. Not a big deal,” replied Mohd Asif Shah, an associate professor at Kebri Dehar University, in eastern Ethiopia.

But the deal turned sour. Although Shah listed SIMATS as an affiliation on at least two research papers he published this fall, in December he still hadn’t received any payments from the school, he complained. Then he turned to LinkedIn to share his frustration in a post that included screenshots of his conversation with Thangavelu, who is also a professor at Saveetha Dental College, part of SIMATS.

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