Category Archives: Third party
In four years, a psychosocial counselor co-authored seven papers on disparate medical topics. How?
At the end of July, Muttukrishna Sarvananthan noticed something curious in the publications of Chulani Herath, a senior lecturer at the Open University of Sri Lanka in Nawala. Herath is listed as a middle author on seven papers about various topics in medicine, including heart disease, stroke, and burnout among general practitioners in China. That … Continue reading In four years, a psychosocial counselor co-authored seven papers on disparate medical topics. How?
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Psst…Need a PhD thesis? That’ll be $63,000
Many readers may have heard whisper of companies that offer a range of writing services — some more ethical than others. Although some companies offer to edit and polish writing, others can write PhD research proposals, masters’ theses, or even a dissertation. In other words, the students engage in so-called “contract cheating” — paying someone … Continue reading Psst…Need a PhD thesis? That’ll be $63,000
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Nearly 500 researchers guilty of misconduct, says Chinese gov’t investigation
Four hundred eighty-six authors have been found guilty of misconduct by the Chinese government, the fall-out from a sweep of retractions by one journal earlier this year. In April, Tumor Biology retracted 107 papers that had been accepted based on faked reviews. Since many of the authors were based in China, the country’s Ministry of Science […]
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Posted by in china retractions, misconduct investigations, self peer review, Third party
Can a tracking system for peer reviewers help stop fakes?
The problem of fake peer reviews never seems to end — although the research community has known about it since 2014, publishers are still discovering new cases. In April, one journal alone retracted 107 papers after discovering the review process had been compromised. By tracking individual reviewers’ contributions, Publons — recently purchased by Clarivate Analytics — […]
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Posted by in self peer review, Third party
Springer purge of fake reviews takes down 10+ more neuroscience papers
Back in April, Springer retracted a record number 107 papers from Tumor Biology after uncovering evidence they were subject to fake peer reviews. But it appears that the Tumor Biology sweep was only part of the story. During the Tumor Biology investigation, Springer found evidence that the “peer review process was compromised” in a dozen papers […]
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Four in 10 biomedical papers out of China are tainted by misconduct, says new survey
Chinese biomedical researchers estimate that 40% of research in their country has been affected in some way by misconduct, according to a new survey. The authors are quick to caution against putting too much stock in this figure due to the subjective nature of the survey, published in Science and Engineering Ethics. The estimates also […]
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Posted by in china retractions, misconduct investigations, sci eng ethics, Third party
A new record: Major publisher retracting more than 100 studies from cancer journal over fake peer reviews
Springer is retracting 107 papers from one journal after discovering they had been accepted with fake peer reviews. Yes, 107. To submit a fake review, someone (often the author of a paper) either makes up an outside expert to review the paper, or suggests a real researcher — and in both cases, provides a fake […]
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Pay to play? Three new ways companies are subverting academic publishing
Some recent communications from companies involved in academic publishing have some journal representatives worried. In one instance, a manuscript editing company offered to pay an editor to help its papers get published in his journal; in another, a research ethics company threatened to investigate all of an author’s papers if he or she didn’t donate […]
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Medical journal retracts study over fake review, authorship concerns
A journal has retracted a 2015 study about lung cancer after learning the peer-review process had been compromised. The paper was published in March, 2015 — the same month publisher BioMed Central (BMC) pulled 43 papers for fake reviews. According to the retraction notice in the European Journal of Medical Research, the authors’ institution in China […]
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7 signs a scientific paper’s authorship was bought
Did you know there is a black market for scientific papers? Unfortunately, there is a growing trend of authors purchasing a spot on the author list of papers-for-sale – and the better the journal, the higher the price. This worrisome trend has been on the minds of Peggy Mason at the University of Chicago and […]
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