Last March, René Aquarius noticed some overlapping patterns in a figure about a 2016 study on the blood-brain barrier. So he took to PubPeer, an online site where scientists often discuss papers, to raise his concerns. An author of the study published in Neuroscience Letters responded saying they are checking the original data to figure … Continue reading ‘Stealth corrections’: when journals quietly fix papers
Sage has retracted 467 articles from the Journal of Intelligent and Fuzzy Systems, a title it took on when it acquired IOS Press last November for an undisclosed sum. The publisher “launched a thorough investigation” into the journal in April, according to a spokesperson, after the indexing company Clarivate “informed us about concerns relating to … Continue reading Exclusive: Publisher retracts more than 450 papers from journal it acquired last year
A journal that lost its impact factor in June is in the midst of a cleanup operation, issuing nearly 140 retractions so far this year. The mass retractions began over a year after sleuths Alexander Magazinov and Guillaume Cabanac first raised concerns about the presence of suspicious citations, tortured phrases and undisclosed use of AI … Continue reading Sleuths spur cleanup at journal with nearly 140 retractions and counting
The dean of science at the University of Sydney is reassessing a series of review papers after commenters on PubPeer pointed out each cited several retracted articles, Retraction Watch has learned. Marcel Dinger and his coauthors will submit addendums to the journals noting the retracted references, he told Retraction Watch, and work with editors to … Continue reading University of Sydney dean working to amend review papers that cited papermill articles
Retraction Watch readers have likely heard about papers showing evidence that they were written by ChatGPT, including one that went viral. We and others have reported on the phenomenon. Here’s a list — relying on a search strategy developed by Guillaume Cabanac, who has been posting the results on PubPeer — of such papers that … Continue reading Papers and peer reviews with evidence of ChatGPT writing
Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? The week at Retraction Watch featured: Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 400. There are more than 47,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 250 titles. And have … Continue reading Weekend reads: A paper written by ChatGPT goes viral; the Gino misconduct investigation report; superconductivity scandal
What should happen to the millions of dollars publishers rake in from authors whose work is later retracted? Guillaume Cabanac, one of the developers of the Problematic Paper Screener, has repeatedly suggested publishers donate such revenue to charity. And now one is doing just that.
Over the past year, amid announcements of thousands of retractions, journal closures and a major index delisting several titles, executives at the troubled publisher Hindawi have at various times mentioned a “new retraction process” for investigating and pulling papers “at scale.” The publisher has declined to provide details – until now. So far in 2023, … Continue reading Hindawi reveals process for retracting more than 8,000 paper mill articles
An article that proposed potential benefits of private equity firms investing in autism service providers has been removed from the journal in which it was published. The article, “Private equity investment: Friend or foe to applied behavior analysis?” was originally published in the International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education as part of a January 2023 special issue devoted to … Continue reading Article defending private-equity involvement in autism services retracted
In 2022, Guillaume Cabanac noticed something unusual: a study had attracted more than 100 citations in a short span of less than two months of being published. Cabanac, a computer scientist at the University of Toulouse in France, initially flagged the study on PubPeer after it was highlighted by the Problematic Paper Screener, which automatically … Continue reading How thousands of invisible citations sneak into papers and make for fake metrics