The week at Retraction Watch featured a praiseworthy retraction by a Nobel laureate, a finding of research misconduct in a much-watched case involving fish and microplastics, and death threats against a journalist reporting on a politician’s plagiarism. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
Plagiarism scandals involving top government officials in the Balkans are not rare. But when Croatia’s defense minister Damir Krstičević was accused last week of plagiarizing parts of his research project, things got ugly. The minister summoned a press conference within a day, in which he indignantly downplayed any plagiarism accusation and turned the tables by … Continue reading Journalist gets death threats after reporting plagiarism accusations against Croatian official
Springer has retracted two papers, which appeared online earlier this year in different journals, after discovering both were published by mistake. A spokesperson at Springer explained that the retractions are “due to a human error.” According to one of the retraction notices, published in Archive for Mathematical Logic, the paper had not yet undergone peer … Continue reading When publishers mess up, why do authors pay the price?
The week at Retraction Watch featured a call to make peer reviews public, lots of news about Cornell food researcher Brian Wansink, and a request by the U.S. NIH that the researchers it funds don’t publish in bad journals. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
The U.S. National Institutes of Health has noticed something: More of the research it’s funding is ending up in questionable journals. Recently, the agency issued a statement highlighting some qualities of these journals — aggressively soliciting submissions, failing to provide clear information about pricing — and urging researchers to avoid them. The NIH’s goal: to … Continue reading NIH to researchers: Don’t publish in bad journals, please
Researchers have retracted a 2017 paper exploring a novel approach to treat kidney injury, because three images were “constructed inappropriately.” That’s about as much as we know: The retraction notice provides few details about the nature of the issue, only that the authors—most of whom work at Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine in Hershey—could … Continue reading Where’s the data? Authors can’t support figures in 2017 kidney paper
After more than 30 years working with scholarly journals, Irene Hames has some thoughts on how to improve peer review. She even wrote a book about it. As the first recipient of the Publons Sentinel Award, Hames spoke to us about the most pressing issues she believes are facing the peer review system — and … Continue reading Make reviews public, says peer review expert
A former postdoc at Emory and Georgetown Universities falsified data in manuscripts and a grant application to the U.S. National Institutes of Health, according to the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Mahandranauth Chetram committed misconduct while at Georgetown, the ORI said in a finding released today
The week at Retraction Watch featured the temporary removal of the director of the U.S. HHS’ Office of Research Integrity, a mass resignation of an journal’s editorial board, and a court injunction against OMICS. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
A US government agency has won an initial court ruling against OMICS, which the government says will help stop the academic publisher’s deceptive business practices. Today, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that it won a preliminary injunction in September in its lawsuit against Srinubabu Gedela, CEO of OMICS Group and other companies. The lawsuit, … Continue reading US court issues injunction against OMICS to stop “deceptive practices”