Introducing two sites that claim to sell authorships on scientific papers

Two years ago, we reported on a website based in Russia that claimed to have brokered authorships for more than 10,000 researchers. (Apparently, neither our coverage nor a cease-and-desist letter from Clarivate Analytics had any effect on the site’s operations.)

And now, we bring you news of what look like two very similar sites — one out of Iran, and one out of Latvia.

The site in Iran, Teziran.org, claims to offer a variety of services, from help with immigration issues to scientific training. What caught our eye in particular was a section of the site (pictured above) that lists a number of “articles ready for acceptance” — at least by Google Translate:

Continue reading Introducing two sites that claim to sell authorships on scientific papers

Weekend reads: A deep dive into a problematic study of ivermectin; how journals respond to allegations; prison and now scrutiny

Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 154.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Continue reading Weekend reads: A deep dive into a problematic study of ivermectin; how journals respond to allegations; prison and now scrutiny

In which we ask: What exactly did peer review accomplish here?

A retraction notice for a 2021 paper in an environmental sciences journal has us wondering if the peer review process for the publication should be declared a Superfund Site. 

The article, “Experimental study and numerical prediction of HTO and 36Cl− diffusion in radioactive waste at Téguline Clay,” appeared in Environmental Technology, a Taylor & Francis title, and was written by a group at Central South University, in Changsha. 

Evidently, little in that title was accurate. 

According to the retraction notice: 

Continue reading In which we ask: What exactly did peer review accomplish here?

Former Tufts grad student settles lawsuit alleging retaliation for whistleblowing

A former veterinary student at Tufts University has settled a $1 million lawsuit alleging that she was punished for claiming that her mentor at the school falsified data in a 2014 article. 

In 2019, Kristy Meadows sued Tufts and two faculty members, Elizabeth Byrnes and Dean Joyce Knoll, whom she said retaliated against her for claiming that Byrnes cooked her results in an article Meadows and Byrnes published in Neuroscience titled “Sex- and age-specific differences in relaxin family peptide receptor expression within the hippocampus and amygdala in rats.” 

According to Law360, which first reported on the settlement: 

Continue reading Former Tufts grad student settles lawsuit alleging retaliation for whistleblowing

Pro-tip: Before submitting your manuscript, delete the plagiarism detection report text

via James Kroll

It’s happened to all of us: You’re putting the final touches on your manuscript and run plagiarism detection software against it. Somehow, part of the software’s report ends up in your abstract — and neither you nor the peer reviewers nor the publishing team notices.

Well, it’s happened to one group of researchers, anyway.

Here’s one such passage, which appears right in “Identification of Selective Forwarding Attacks in Remote locator Network utilizing Adaptive Trust Framework,” a 2019 paper that was part of the IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering:

Continue reading Pro-tip: Before submitting your manuscript, delete the plagiarism detection report text

Publisher offers cash for citations

Worried about scarce research funding? Does the prospect of paying rent on that meager post-doc salary keep you up at night? Fear no more! 

Innoscience Research in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to the rescue.

The company has launched an innovative (read: shady) scheme to pay researchers to cite studies from several journals it controls. How much can you earn? That depends. The payout is structured this way: $6 a citation and up to five cites, or $30, per paper, or $150 in total across all five journals. 

Continue reading Publisher offers cash for citations

COVID-19 wastewater tracking paper ends up in the sewer

A paper that sought to bring some math to the idea that the spread of COVID-19 could be tracked in human excrement has been retracted because of the authors submitted it to two different Elsevier journals on the same day — and because of some eyebrow-raising behavior by the alleged peer reviewers. 

The first author of the article was Ernestine Atangana, a researcher in the Centre for Environmental Management at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein. 

The article, “Will the extraction of COVID-19 from wastewater help flatten the curve?,” appeared in Chemosphere in May — where it caught the eye of a researcher in the field (who did not want to be identified) who was struck by its sheer awfulness. (We should note that others have explored the same idea, and come to mixed conclusions.)

Among the more risible sections, the researcher told us, was this: 

Continue reading COVID-19 wastewater tracking paper ends up in the sewer

Publisher retracting more than 30 articles from paper mills

via Pixy

The publisher SAGE is in the process of retracting more than 30 papers across three of its journals after determining that they were churned out by paper mills — prompting the company to take a closer look at its policies and procedures. 

The suspect papers were initially flagged by Elisabeth Bik and others as part of a group of some 400 articles that showed signs of having been milled. As we reported in March, a dozen of the articles were hit with expressions of concern — prompting some head-scratching from Bik, in particular, about why they weren’t being retracted outright. 

A spokesperson for SAGE told us: 

Continue reading Publisher retracting more than 30 articles from paper mills

Weekend reads: It’s not all publish or perish?; plagiarism hunters; controls on ‘gain of function’ research weaken

Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 151.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Continue reading Weekend reads: It’s not all publish or perish?; plagiarism hunters; controls on ‘gain of function’ research weaken

Guest editor says journal will retract dozens of inappropriate papers after his email was hacked

Source

What do aerobics and dance training have to do with geology?

If that sounds like an odd question, take a look at more than 70 articles in a special collection of the Arabian Journal of Geosciences, published by Springer Nature, with titles such as:

Continue reading Guest editor says journal will retract dozens of inappropriate papers after his email was hacked