De 10 academic weekly retracted 64 papers: mostly from China

Abstract The peer review mechanism, regarded by academic circles as an important criterion for measuring the quality of papers, has recently become a “pain point” for academic fraud. After the British BMC Press withdrew 43 papers a few months ago, its parent company, the German Springer Publishing Group, also withdrew its 10 studies on the same day...
The peer review mechanism, which is regarded by the academic community as an important criterion for measuring the quality of papers, has recently become a "pain point" for academic fraud.

After the British BMC Press withdrew 43 papers a few months ago, its parent company, the Springer Publishing Group, also withdrew 64 papers published in its 10 academic weekly magazines. Both paper withdrawals were due to fraud in the peer review process, and the authors of most of the papers were from China.

Xinhuanet London on August 18th, Springer Publishing Group said in a statement to Xinhua News Agency that the group's journal editors first discovered the authenticity of the commentator's email address in some papers, and then launched The internal investigation found a forged peer review report. "We have good reason to believe that the peer review process of these 64 papers has been improperly affected."

The statement did not clearly indicate which country the 64 papers came from. However, the catalogue of the retracted papers searched by Xinhua News Agency on the group's website shows that most of the authors are from China, including researchers in Shanghai, Beijing, Shandong and other places.

In an interview with Xinhua News Agency, the executive vice president of the Springer Group, William Curtis, said that most of the papers withdrawn this time were submitted last year, and the number of papers received by the group last year was 0.05. %. “These dismissed papers do not represent the overall level of papers published by Chinese researchers. Many of the papers they publish have very large academic breakthroughs in their respective fields.”

He said that the phenomenon of forging peer review through various means has affected the global academic community. "We don't think this is a problem unique to China." Statistics released by the "Retraction Observation" website, which tracks the quality of academic papers, show that In the past three years, the number of papers that were withdrawn due to peer review fraud accounted for 15% of the total number of papers that were posted on the site.

The so-called peer review is a paper review system commonly used in academic journals. Generally, the journal editors invite scholars in the field of the paper to evaluate the quality of the paper, and the editors decide whether to publish the results. The intention of this system is to ensure that the paper is “open and honest” and that the research is sufficiently real and weighty.

The focus of these two paper withdrawals has gathered in peer review. Many publishers have always allowed authors to recommend peer-reviewed candidates to journal editors in the process of submitting relevant materials.

But previous surveys conducted by BMC Press showed that this provided an opportunity for authors or third parties to manipulate the peer review process. A common practice is to provide the names of well-known experts, but to fabricate the relevant e-mail addresses. If the journals send review invitations to the above-mentioned fake e-mail addresses, they will soon receive a review of the paper's positive comments. Get the journal adoption.

Virginia Barber, chairman of the Publications Ethics Committee, said in an interview with Xinhua News Agency that this revealed loopholes in the editing process of some journals, so that such forged peer review reports were submitted. However, she also believes that the journals have made timely remedies after discovering these vulnerabilities, and will not have much impact on the peer review mechanism.

Many journal publishers, including BMC, no longer allow authors of papers to recommend candidates for peer review. For the withdrawal of this paper, the Springer Group stated that it will strengthen the review of those who participated in peer review experts, allowing editors to check the identity of these experts and their e-mails more carefully.

In the process of investigating peer-reviewed fraud by institutions such as BMC, third-party organizations have emerged. These institutions are legal themselves. They provide paper format optimization before authors, especially those who speak non-English first-language, submit papers. Language retouching and other services. But whether they assist or even lead the peer-reviewed fraud behavior is a big question.

Curtis said that the current "limited evidence" shows that such institutions may have participated in relevant fraudulent activities during the submission of papers, but at present "it is not yet fully confirmed that this is the actual situation."

Barber also believes that although most of the agencies providing these services work in accordance with the rules, some third-party agencies may be involved in peer-reviewed fraud. Chinese researchers will use these third-party services more commonly than researchers in other countries, which may partly explain why the two paper withdrawals mainly involved Chinese researchers.

However, Barber said that many researchers must publish papers in international journals in order to go further in their careers. This kind of incentive mechanism has also led many of them to use various means to publish papers. Counterfeiting peer review is only one of the many fraud problems in academia. The most fundamental problems involving academic incentives are not solved. Even if they can block peer review loopholes, counterfeiters will still achieve their goals through other means.


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