Last year, a new study on green innovations and patents in 27 countries left one reader slack-jawed. The findings were no surprise. What was baffling was how the authors, two professors of economics in Europe, had pulled off the research in the first place. The reader, a PhD student in economics, was working with the … Continue reading No data? No problem! Undisclosed tinkering in Excel behind economics paper
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 The week at Retraction Watch featured: Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to nearly 400. There are more than 46,000 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 allegations at Harvard; plagiarism euphemisms; citation cartels in math
The journal Cureus has retracted 56 papers nearly two years after it first began to suspect the works were of dubious lineage. Cureus – an open access journal founded in 2009 and acquired by Springer Nature in 2022 – slapped 55 of the papers with expressions of concern in April 2022. At that time, at … Continue reading Journal retracts more than 50 studies from Saudi Arabia for faked authorship
Two assistant professors at universities in the United States are coauthors of a review that appears to have been advertised for sale by the Indian paper mill iTrilon, a Retraction Watch investigation has found. One of the professors, Yuguang Liu of Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., is also guest editor of the MDPI special issue … Continue reading Exclusive: Mayo, Florida profs among authors of article tied to Indian paper mill
The entire editorial board of a sociology journal has resigned after they say that the publisher, Springer Nature, installed new editors-in-chief without consulting the board — but Springer Nature says they tried unsuccessfully to engage the board on planning going back at least five years. In December 2023, senior editors of the journal, Theory and … Continue reading Sociology journal’s entire editorial board resigns after Springer Nature appointed new leadership
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 The week at Retraction Watch featured: Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to nearly 400. There are more than 46,000 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: Paper mills bribe editors; Dana-Farber researchers to retract paper; ‘The Next Battle in Higher Ed’
New findings from a survey of psychology researchers show nearly half of the respondents have encountered unethical authorship practices in studies they have been involved in. Researchers in Belgium surveyed more than 800 people involved in psychological research about their experiences with gift and ghost authorship, as well as the use of explicit authorship guidelines … Continue reading Gift authorship common in psychology, survey suggests
Last year, a professor and dean at a university in Spain suddenly began publishing papers with a multitude of far-flung researchers. His coauthors, until then exclusively national, now came from places like India, China, Nepal, South Korea, Georgia, Austria, and the United States. How these unlikely collaborations began is not entirely clear. But a six-month … Continue reading Exclusive: Paper-mill articles buoyed Spanish dean’s research output
You can love math, but can you math love? Scientific Reports has retracted a 2023 paper that tried to do just that by imposing a numerical model onto an ancient Persian love story that may have influenced Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The paper, “A fractional order nonlinear model of the love story of Layla and … Continue reading ‘Nonsensical content’: Springer Nature journal breaks up with a paper on a love story
An Elsevier journal has retracted seven articles by a prolific data fabricator – three and a half years after the publisher said it would retract 10 of his papers, and five months after the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) threatened the journal with sanctions for the delay. As we previously reported, the Journal of the … Continue reading Exclusive: COPE threatens Elsevier journal with sanctions for ‘clear breakdown’ before seven retractions