Perhaps the Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing needs to look for a different kind of smarts. The journal – a Springer Nature title – has just retracted 51 papers. The episode is the latest in a string of high-volume retractions by major publishers of papers included in special issues. In at least five … Continue reading Journal about ‘ambient intelligence’ retracts more than 50 papers at once
Kale may be a superfood, but for one paper on the vegetable, Twitter proved to be its Kryptonite. We’ll explain. Last November, Food Science & Nutrition published an article titled “Kale (Brassica oleracea var. sabellica) as miracle food with special reference to therapeutic and nutraceuticals perspective.” How miraculous? As the authors, from Government College University … Continue reading Kale ‘miracle food’ paper retracted for being ‘word salad’
A psychiatry journal has retracted two papers on Covid-19 and mental health, and a third on racism, after concluding that an author on the articles rigged the peer-review process. The papers, which appeared in the International Journal of Social Psychiatry (IJSP), were co-authored by Debanjan Banerjee, then geriactric psychiatrist at the National Institute of Mental … Continue reading Journal retracts three papers — including two on COVID-19 — because ‘trainee editor’ committed misconduct
The Anatomical Record is correcting itself in a big way, pulling 13 articles, including several linked to paper mills. The papers, all by authors in China, were published between 2019 and 2021. Some were flagged in a September 2021 report on research misconduct by the Chinese government. They join a slew of articles The Anatomical … Continue reading Anatomy journal retracts 13 papers
A total of 436 papers in two Springer Nature journals are being subjected to expressions of concern, in the latest case of special issues — in this case, “topical collections” — likely being exploited by rogue editors or impersonators. The move follows the discovery, as we reported in August, of more than 70 papers in … Continue reading Springer Nature slaps more than 400 papers with expressions of concern all at once
A World Health Organization (WHO) database of papers about COVID-19 contains hundreds of articles published in hijacked journals whose publishers have stolen titles and legitimacy from the original publications. That’s what I found when I analyzed the WHO’s “COVID-19 Global literature on coronavirus disease,” which as of August 1 included more than 318,000 papers sourced … Continue reading WHO COVID-19 library contains hundreds of papers from hijacked journals
It keeps happening. There was the case of Talent Development and Excellence, which cloned an existing journal and managed to index hundreds of articles in Scopus, one of the world’s leading databases for scholarly literature. The Transylvanian Review did the same thing, and so did Test Engineering and Management. These journals — which can make … Continue reading How hijacked journals keep fooling one of the world’s leading databases
When researchers in Italy published a paper last November claiming to have found evidence of SARS-CoV-2 in that country as early as September 2019 — four months before the first official case of Covid-19 — the World Health Organization took immediate notice. According to Reuters, the WHO asked the group — with ties to Italy’s … Continue reading Paper claiming presence of SARS-CoV-2 in Italy in 2019 earns expression of concern
Nearly two years after a doctoral student hanged himself in a building on the campus of the University of Florida, in Gainesville, his supervisor has been placed on paid leave, a move that follows a report released last month that found evidence of misconduct at three different computing conferences. Huixiang Chen was found dead in … Continue reading After grad student suicide, misconduct findings, university suspends professor
Journals have flagged more than three dozen articles by a team of authors in Iran for concern over the integrity of their data. The moves have come in the 15 months since data sleuths raised questions about the data in more than 170 papers from the group. Among the most recent moves, a nutrition journal … Continue reading Journals flag concerns in three dozen papers by nutrition researchers