A new journal is offering something we’ve never seen before: A cash reward to corresponding authors of papers it publishes. Normally, in the case of open-access journals, researchers have to pay article processing charges (APCs). But Minimally Invasive Surgical Oncology, an open-access journal launched at the end of last year, flips the typical narrative — … Continue reading Journal: Publish here, and we’ll pay you $500
Last year, Boris Ratnikov was reading a paper and saw a familiar image. He quickly realized: The image was from a 2012 paper he’d written, but wasn’t cited. The 2016 Cell Metabolism paper he was reading had copied a figure from his 2012 PLOS ONE paper without referencing it. In September 2016, Ratnikov, who is … Continue reading When is a citation not enough?
The researcher whose brazen theft of a manuscript he had reviewed prompted a “Dear plagiarist” letter from the aggrieved author once the deceit was discovered has lost a second paper for plagiarism. International Scholarly Research Notices, a Hindawi publication, has retracted a 2012 study by Carmine Finelli and colleagues, citing widespread misuse of text from … Continue reading Researcher who stole manuscript during peer review earns second retraction
Suing the government is difficult. And because public universities often function as an arm of state governments, that makes them hard to sue, too, a fact reiterated in a whistleblower case decided earlier this year. In January, Judge David Hale of the Western District of Kentucky dismissed a lawsuit filed by former employees of the … Continue reading Failed whistleblower suit is a reminder that public universities are hard to sue
The week at Retraction Watch featured a look at a school where everyone has published in possibly predatory journals, and doubts about a study of doing math unconsciously. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
The troubles continue for a bone researcher, who’s lost multiple papers in recent months due to problems ranging from data issues to including authors without their consent. Now, journals have retracted two more papers by Yoshihiro Sato. And in a sign of the downstream effects that fraud can have, another journal has retracted two meta-analyses by other … Continue reading Fraud by bone researcher takes down two meta-analyses, a clinical trial, and review
The week at Retraction Watch featured a study of why researchers commit misconduct, and the story of former Northwestern scientist who sued the university for defamation. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
The week at Retraction Watch featured the case of a peer review nightmare, and a story about harassment by a would-be scientific critic. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
A researcher in Greece has issued extensive — what we sometimes call “mega” — corrections to two 2016 papers published in a medical journal in Romania. The first author — Alexandra Kalogeraki, a pathology researcher at the University of Crete in Greece — retracted two reviews from the same journal last year for plagiarism. The newest notices … Continue reading Researcher issues massive changes to papers amidst plagiarism investigation
When authors are faced with filling out a journal’s conflict of interest form, deciding what qualifies as a relevant conflict can be tricky. When such omissions come to light, only rarely do they result in retractions – and certainly not author bans. But there are exceptions. In October, the journal Chest retracted a 2015 review … Continue reading Undisclosed conflicts of interest usually lead to corrections – but for some journals, that’s not enough