A university and a publisher are teaming up to combat paper mills in a unique way: By enlisting a Ph.D. candidate. In April, the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) at Leiden University in the Netherlands announced it would be collaborating with Wiley to establish a four-year research position focused on paper mills. “Of … Continue reading A Ph.D. in paper mills?
The organization responsible for allocating basic research funding in China has issued misconduct findings against 26 researchers for violations ranging from breach of confidentiality to image manipulation, plagiarism, and buying and selling authorship. The National Natural Science Foundation of China, or NSFC, released the results of 15 misconduct investigations on April 11. Several of the … Continue reading Chinese funding agency sanctions 26 researchers in latest misconduct report
A Bangladesh-based organization focused on development economics and its founder have been churning out papers filled with misstatements, inconsistencies, ethical lapses and “statistically improbable data,” according to researchers involved in an ongoing effort to replicate the work. One journal has already retracted a paper for falsely claiming to describe a randomized, controlled trial and data … Continue reading Replication probe finds ‘statistically improbable data’ tied to institute in Bangladesh
The Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical Sciences in India has been on our radar for a while. So when we got word the university’s channel on an open access journal platform disappeared, we were curious what might be going on. Just this year, we reported Saveetha was among 14 universities with “questionable publication practices,” … Continue reading Indian university’s channel on publisher’s platform disappears
Longtime Retraction Watch readers know the scientists on our Leaderboard have changed over the years. But one characteristic has remained relatively constant: There are few women on that list – in fact, never rarely more than one at a time. So when a recent paper dove into whether retraction rates vary by the gender of … Continue reading Do men or women retract more? A study found the answer is … complicated
Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 500. There are more than 58,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 300 titles. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately … Continue reading Weekend reads: On errors and consequences; AI in peer review; Canada’s PM accused of plagiarism
Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 500. There are more than 55,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 300 titles. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately … Continue reading Weekend reads: ‘The Discipline of Last Resort’; universities with the most retractions; ‘patent mills’
Nick Wise had a prolific start to his sleuthing journey. In July 2021, the fluid dynamics researcher started looking for tortured phrases in published papers, and has since had a hand in at least 1,000 retractions. He also helped identify unique phrases for the Tortured Phrases Detector, a function of the Problematic Paper Screener that … Continue reading When a sleuth gets hired by a publisher: A Q&A with Nick Wise
The 3,000+ journals in the Springer Nature portfolio published over 482,000 articles in 2024, according to data published this week on a new research integrity page on the company’s website. The page also shares a data point you don’t typically get from publishers: 2,923 articles were retracted. The numbers are a small part of the … Continue reading Springer Nature retracted 2,923 papers last year
Dear RW readers, can you spare $25? The week at Retraction Watch featured: Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 500. There are more than 55,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 300 titles. And have you seen our leaderboard … Continue reading Weekend reads: ‘Why I retracted part of my PhD dissertation’; second NIH official departs; Bik fund