Each year since 2013, we put together a roundup of the 10 most-read stories we published on the blog over the past 12 months. This list doesn’t have some of what you might think are the biggest stories of the year—Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s resignation and retractions, allegations of fraud against Harvard Business School professor … Continue reading The top ten stories at Retraction Watch in 2023
We are pleased to present an excerpt from The Predatory Paradox: Ethics, Politics, and Practices in Contemporary Scholarly Publishing by Amy Koerber, Jesse C. Starkey, Karin Ardon-Dryer, R. Glenn Cummins, Lyombe Eko, and Kerk F. Kee, published by Open Book Publishers, October 2023. In 2015, Johannes Bohannon, along with three coauthors, published an article titled … Continue reading A closer look at the ‘chocolate with high cocoa content’ hoax
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 The week at Retraction Watch featured: Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to over 375. There are more than 45,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains well over 200 titles. And … Continue reading Weekend reads: More ‘duplicative language’ in Harvard president’s work; Peru cracks down on misconduct; prison for Macchiarini
Pleading emails requesting papers are regular visitors to one’s inbox. These unsolicited and flattering requests promise rapid publication and tempt authors to part with their work. Even master’s and doctoral students, after graduation, receive sweet-talking requests to publish their dissertations as a book, a book chapter, or as a paper. Predatory journals and publishers are … Continue reading Journals going rogue, authors beware
On March 12, a senior administrator at a university in India sent a business proposal to a prolific economist in Ethiopia. If he joined the school’s stable of adjunct professors, the administrator promised, easy money could be made. All the economist had to do was “add our affiliation for incentives in your papers,” explained Lakshmi … Continue reading Exclusive: Researcher outs Indian university’s publishing scam after it fails to pay him
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
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 to over 375. There are more than 45,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains well over 200 titles. And … Continue reading Weekend reads: A new retraction record; corrections by Harvard president; when patents cite retracted papers
Just four months after an allegedly stolen dinosaur fossil was returned from Germany to Brazil, a prominent European paleontologist published a paper bound to spark renewed controversy in an already-divided research community. And so it did: Less than a month after the article, which criticized the online repatriation campaign, was published on October 2 in … Continue reading ‘Trump’ vs. ‘Indiana Jones’: Paper reviving bitter quarrel over dino fossil pulled for murky reasons
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 to over 375. There are more than 45,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains well over 200 titles. And … Continue reading Weekend reads: NEJM’s racist past; ‘journal editors are like gods’; Harvard accused of pushing out misinformation researcher for criticizing Meta
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 to over 375. There are more than 45,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains well over 200 titles. … Continue reading Weekend reads: Hijacked journals polluting an index; special issues take a hit; a data breach at a megajournal