A journal that lost its impact factor and spot in a major index this year has made good on a promise to retract dozens of papers with “compromised” peer review.
Genetika, a publication of the Serbian Genetics Society, did not receive an updated impact factor this year after Clarivate, the company behind the closely-watched but controversial metric, identified signs of citation stacking, a practice in which authors or journals seem to trade citations. Clarivate also dropped Genetika from its Web of Science index for failing to meet editorial quality criteria.
Clarivate’s actions followed a blog post by scientific sleuth Elisabeth Bik about what she called the “Iranian Plant Paper Mill, which included 31 papers published in Genetika.
Snežana Mladenović Drinić, the editor of Genetika, previously told Retraction Watch the journal would retract “papers for which it was determined that the peer review was not done validly.” Jelena Milasin, president of the Serbian Genetics Society, also said Genetika had offered to retract 32 “suspicious papers” published in 2021 and 2022, in the hopes of salvaging their standing with Clarivate.
In its latest issue, Genetika published a notice retracting 31 articles and a corrigendum “due to evidence indicating that the peer review of this paper was compromised, using of frauted [sic] data, high number of unfitting citation, overoll [sic] general misconduct related to professional codes of ethics.”
The list largely overlaps with Bik’s, and includes five papers for which Clarivate had provided “evidence of inappropriate manipulation of citations.”
The authors and reviewers of the retracted papers, as well as “authors who misused the papers published in Genetika by citing them unjustifiably” will be blacklisted from publishing in the journal in the future, according to the notice. It stated:
We would like to apologize [sic] authors, readers and all scientific community that we are having to make those retractions, and we will take all necessary steps to ensure our editorial and peer review processes keep pace with the evolving threat and advancements in scientific fraud.
Drinić and Milasin have not responded to our request for comment.
The five papers with manipulated citations all included M. Khayatnezhad as a coauthor. Khayatnezhad previously held a position in the environmental science and engineering department at the Islamic Azad University’s Ardabil branch in Iran, and also was managing editor of the university’s journal Anthropogenic Pollution. The journal now has a different managing editor, and an email we sent to Khayatnezhad’s university address bounced back. He did not respond to our request for comment sent to another address.
Hat tip: Alexander Magazinov
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