A prolific hijacked journal has managed to breach the defenses of Scopus, one of the world’s leading academic databases. This time, the target is the award-winning journal Community Practitioner, the official publication of the UK-based organization Unite-CPHVA.
On July 7, 2023, I reported via 𝕏 that the journal’s homepage in Scopus had been compromised and was redirecting users to a fraudulent website masquerading as the legitimate publication.
Despite their retracted status, problematic articles that present unreliable information, critical errors, non-reproducible results, or fabricated data frequently continue to be propagated in the scholarly literature through continued citations. There are good reasons for citing retracted work, for example to critically discuss the information presented in the article, or in studies pertaining to the field of research integrity.
However, in the majority of cases, retracted publications continue to be cited as if the retraction had not occurred. In studies of the citation of retractedpublications, only between 5% and 20% of citations acknowledge the retracted status of the article or are critical of the article. A lack of awareness of the retracted status of a publication may be a significant contributing factor to the perpetuation of citing the article after the retraction event occurred.
Previousresearch has found that the fact an article has been retracted is often inconsistently displayed across different resources, creating challenges for authors seeking out articles to refine their research questions, develop their approaches, or contextualize their findings. The continued citation and inclusion of retracted work without appropriate discussion or acknowledgement of its retracted status in subsequent studies, poses a direct threat to the reliability of the published literature and the overall trust in research and scholarship.
We asked corresponding author Caitlin Bakker, of the University of Regina — who also chaired the NISO committee — some questions about the findings and their implications.
A research group based in Pakistan has had 10 of their papers retracted from Wiley’s Food Science & Nutrition based on flaws in the peer review process.
According to the notices, which were identical for each article, “the editorial office found unambiguous evidence that the manuscript was accepted solely based on compromised and insufficient reviewer reports.”
A journal has retracted an entire special issue over concerns the guest-edited papers underwent a “compromised” peer review process.
In a supplement to Volume 337 Issue 1 of Annals of Operations Research, 23 papers were retracted with the same statement:
The Editor-in-Chief and the publisher have retracted this article. The article was submitted to be part of a guest-edited issue. An investigation by the publisher found a number of articles, including this one, with a number of concerns, including but not limited to compromised editorial handling and peer review process, inappropriate or irrelevant references or not being in scope of the journal or guest-edited issue. Based on the investigation’s findings the Editor-in-Chief therefore no longer has confidence in the results and conclusions of this article.
The articles in the guest-edited issue, Prescriptive Analytics Using Machine Learning and Mathematical Programming for Sustainable Operations Research, were published between June 2022 and October 2023.
A panel of scholars in Finland has downgraded 60 journals in their quality rating system, following months of review and feedback from researchers.
The Finnish Publication Forum (JUFO) classifies and rates journals and other scholarly publications to “support the quality assessment of academic research,” according to its website. JUFO considers the level of transparency, the number of experts on a publication’s editorial board, and the standard of peer review to make its assessment, which academics can use to determine the credibility of a given title or its publisher.
JUFO’s classification ranges from 3, for “supreme-level” publications, to 1, which still counts as legitimate publication. Level 0 means the journal is excluded from the ranking, which may dissuade researchers from publishing with them, James Heathers, a scientific sleuth said. Finland’s university funding model relies on JUFO as a publication quality metric.
The corresponding author of a paper flagged on PubPeer for an apparently duplicated image will be asking the journal to publish a correction, Retraction Watch has learned.
