Search Results for: nature

How hijacked journals keep fooling one of the world’s leading databases

It keeps happening.  There was the case of Talent Development and Excellence, which cloned an existing journal and managed to index hundreds of articles in Scopus, one of the world’s leading databases for scholarly literature. The Transylvanian Review did the same thing, and so did Test Engineering and Management. These journals — which can make … Continue reading How hijacked journals keep fooling one of the world’s leading databases

Weekend reads: Legal threats, lawsuits, a professor loses emeritus status, and ‘the 60-Year-Old Scientific Screwup That Helped Covid Kill’

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: Paper linking frequency of Google search terms to violence against … Continue reading Weekend reads: Legal threats, lawsuits, a professor loses emeritus status, and ‘the 60-Year-Old Scientific Screwup That Helped Covid Kill’

‘The notices are utterly unhelpful’: A look at how journals have handled allegations about hundreds of papers

Retraction Watch readers may recall the names Jun Iwamoto and Yoshihiro Sato, who now sit in positions 3 and 4 of our leaderboard of retractions, Sato with more than 100. Readers may also recall the names Andrew Grey, Alison Avenell and Mark Bolland, whose sleuthing was responsible for those retractions. In a recent paper in … Continue reading ‘The notices are utterly unhelpful’: A look at how journals have handled allegations about hundreds of papers

How can universities and journals work together better on misconduct allegations?

Retractions, expressions of concern, and corrections often arise from reader critiques sent by readers, whether those readers are others in the field, sleuths, or other interested parties. In many of those cases, journals seek the input of authors’ employers, often universities. In a recent paper in Research Integrity and Peer Review, longtime scientific publishing consultant … Continue reading How can universities and journals work together better on misconduct allegations?

Weekend reads: Government interference in research; ‘mega’ reviewers; tobacco funding draws 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: Drug company withdraws court motion requesting retraction of papers critical … Continue reading Weekend reads: Government interference in research; ‘mega’ reviewers; tobacco funding draws scrutiny

“Yep, pretty slow”: Nutrition researchers lose six papers

Six months after we reported that journals had slapped expressions of concern on more than three dozen papers by a group of nutrition researchers in Iran, the retractions have started to trickle in.  But clock started nearly two years ago, after data sleuths presented journals with questions about the findings in roughly 170 papers by … Continue reading “Yep, pretty slow”: Nutrition researchers lose six papers

Authors yank ketamine study, hoping it will go away without attention, and journal obliges

The authors of a paper on the antidepressant effects of ketamine have retracted their article for a lack of reproducibility — but readers have no way of knowing that because the journal declined to say as much in the retraction notice. If that sounds like a tale from the pages of the Journal of Neuroscience, … Continue reading Authors yank ketamine study, hoping it will go away without attention, and journal obliges

Weekend reads: Allegations about exploitative research; COVID-19 retractions; how to get cited more often

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: Ecologist who lost thesis awards earns expressions of concern after … Continue reading Weekend reads: Allegations about exploitative research; COVID-19 retractions; how to get cited more often

Years after faked peer review concerns surfaced, journals are still falling for it

A group of authors has lost a pair of papers in a computing journal for monkeying with the peer review process.  The first author on both articles was Mohamed Abdel-Basset of the Department of Operations Research in the Faculty of Computers and Informatics at Zagazig University, in Sharqiya. Mai Mohamad, also of Zagazig, is the … Continue reading Years after faked peer review concerns surfaced, journals are still falling for it

Rejection overruled, retraction ensues when annoyed reviewer does deep dive into data

As a prominent criminologist, Kim Rossmo often gets asked to review manuscripts. So it was that he found himself reviewing a meta-analysis by a pair of Dutch researchers — Wim Bernasco and Remco van Dijke, of the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, in Amsterdam — looking at a phenomenon called … Continue reading Rejection overruled, retraction ensues when annoyed reviewer does deep dive into data