Latest on retraction of Chines papers

[Laurie Goodman]

You may have already seen this:
http://retractionwatch.com/2017/04/20/new-record-major-publisher-retracting-100-studies-cancer-journal-fake-peer-reviews/

Springer has retracted 107 papers from China, from one journal (Tumor Biology) for using fake reviewers... This is the largest retraction ever.

It's hitting hard now in China as this continues to go on as the official news outlet Xinhu in China is interviewing staff from GigaScience about our thoughts on this, and how we handle peer review, etc. It will be interesting to see what comes out of that.

Two things:
1. China HAS to stop giving huge piles of money to authors who get into journals with particular impact factors. This, however, is so embedded as providing both professional respect as well as money, I'm not sure how long it would take, even if the government did stop giving monetary rewards...

2. Open peer review... people can see what the comments are - and who signed the review. This one, too, is embedded in our culture of fear of reprisal... which would also be less likely to happen with- open peer review.

-L

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Laurie Goodman, PhD

ORCID ID: 0000-0001-9724-5976
GigaScience, Editor-in-Chief
 

Co-Publishers: BGI and Oxford University Press

BGI-Hong Kong Ltd. 16 Dai Fu Street, Tai Po Industrial Estate, NT, Hong Kong. China
Tel: 852 3610 3531 (GMT +8)
Main Email: edit...@gigasciencejournal.com
Website: http://www.gigasciencejournal.com
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[Jo De]

I agree with you Laurie, and kudos to Retractionwatch as well.

Joann

On Mon, Apr 24, 2017 at 1:19 PM, Laurie Goodman <lau...@gigasciencejournal.com> wrote:

You may have already seen this:
http://retractionwatch.com/2017/04/20/new-record-major-publisher-retracting-100-studies-cancer-journal-fake-peer-reviews/

Springer has retracted 107 papers from China, from one journal (Tumor Biology) for using fake reviewers... This is the largest retraction ever.

It's hitting hard now in China as this continues to go on as the official news outlet Xinhu in China is interviewing staff from GigaScience about our thoughts on this, and how we handle peer review, etc. It will be interesting to see what comes out of that.

Two things:
1. China HAS to stop giving huge piles of money to authors who get into journals with particular impact factors. This, however, is so embedded as providing both professional respect as well as money, I'm not sure how long it would take, even if the government did stop giving monetary rewards...

2. Open peer review... people can see what the comments are - and who signed the review. This one, too, is embedded in our culture of fear of reprisal... which would also be less likely to happen with- open peer review.

-L

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Laurie Goodman, PhD

ORCID ID: 0000-0001-9724-5976
GigaScience, Editor-in-Chief
 

Co-Publishers: BGI and Oxford University Press

BGI-Hong Kong Ltd. 16 Dai Fu Street, Tai Po Industrial Estate, NT, Hong Kong. China
Tel: 852 3610 3531 (GMT +8)

Main Email: editorial@gigasciencejournal.com

Website: http://www.gigasciencejournal.com
Follow us on Twitter @GigaScience; Find us at FaceBook; Read GigaBlog

Sign up for Article Alerts

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[x...@whu.edu.cn]

Hi  Laurie and Jo,

Thanks for bringing it up. 

As a Chinese researcher and an academic author, I have noticed the big retraction as well, sorry to let you know but I happen to know one of the authors. Meanwhile about the trust and misconduct in scholarly communication, I am doing a research together with CIBER now, so I would like to share my thought here with you. 

 

First and foremost, it is a serious misconduct. Every player in this table should follow academic rules. Cheating is wrong.

 

From the general perspective, China scientific output ranks No.2 in the world. The 107 papers that are only a tiny proportion in the whole output cannot represent the whole rising society. The dominant majority of Chinese scientific research papers follow the strict and formal academic paradigms in writing and publishing process.

 

Also, speaking of the reasons, there are 524 Chinese clinical medicine practitioners whose papers were withdrew involving this incident. For those researchers, the inner motivation is getting promoted. China’s academic evaluating system for medical employees (and all researchers) requires annual output in SCI/SSCI which takes up great in the whole. The more one publishes in SCI/SSCI, the bigger chance for him/her being promoted.  To be honest, it is a rigid system though which costs much time and effert to change it and we are working on it. The fact is that it lacks of medical personnel resources in China while there are so many patients every day. The doctors are all very busy with patients and they don’t have time to write academic papers. This is an objective fact rather than an excuse for cheating. I personally think that the evaluation system which requires them to publish papers is ridiculous.

 

Despite these individual matters, the publisher is the final guard for journal publishing. Publisher should take their responsibilities to filter content for the society. As a “Gate Keeper” the publisher is expected to to complete internal control mechanism for a better administration on journals.

It is best for everyone to see that they refuse those cheating papers before publishing. At the meantime, the predatory journals that collude with some third-party organizations should be noticed. It is those journals that provide green path for academic misbehavior.

 

In the end, resisting and rejecting academic misbehavior is a global mission. All the researchers and publishers should join together to protect integrity of scientific research and international journals.

Jie

 

---

Jie Xu, PhD, Associate Professor

School of Information Management

Wuhan University, China

x...@whu.edu.cn 

Tel. +86 68755187

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[Laurie Goodman]

Jie,

You are spot on about the journals not being rigorous enough. When we spoke with the folks at Xinhun, they asked about what we did to reduce the chance of using a 'fak' reviewer. We stated categorically that we do a very careful assessment of the reviewers we use. We also do not include a place for suggesting reviewers in our online submission system.

Every single journal we have seen needing to retract papers have had editors who are not full time editors, and who are likely to be relieved to not have to seek out a potential reviewer. Worse, if the journal has a system where they input names of reviewers they have used- it can then spread to other journals using that same system.

'Lazy' (Okay- non-rigorous) editors is a big problem that helps further this practice. Publishers can remove the 'suggest a reviewer' option to also reduce the possibility.

Working with BGI, and them working with MDs for research projects, has really shown me what a terrible position this puts MDs in- as you say, they already have enough to do! I think, because of this, some very busy doctors seek out help from companies that say they are writing and editing companies (which they will of course go to since they are non-native English speakers), and then these companies let them know that they can help at more intense levels by writing the paper for the doctor and submitting it etc- and getting it published. So, many of these busy people don't actually realize that these companies are committing fraud- in their name.

We have done some 'tests' on companies in HK to see how far they are willing to take us in the publishing process, and once we start to push for helping write and submit, etc. we get referred to another company -but the email signatures are the same as the original company. It is quite difficult.

This system of:
(1) Pushing jIF (or number of publications) as the main (or only) mechanism for determining promotions and funding
(2) pressed-for-time individuals who have the extra difficult problem of being a non-native English speaker, but who MUST publish

(3) unethical companies that present themselves as editing companies- but actually promote their successes (and thus gain more clients) by doing fraudulent things.
(4) all capped off by non-rigorous editors who make it all of this easier for these papers to get past the "gate"

(5) and so many other smaller practices that play into this as well.
 make this difficult, and definitely not a straightforward thing to tackle... (I doubt it could ever be completely eliminated)

Also- while reviewer fraud is highly discussed in the news right now (primarily because of the blast of high number in retracted papers at once)- there are so many other types of scientific misconduct...

'
Openness on all sides helps with all of this.

-L

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Laurie Goodman, PhD

ORCID ID: 0000-0001-9724-5976
GigaScience, Editor-in-Chief
 

Co-Publishers: BGI and Oxford University Press

BGI-Hong Kong Ltd. 16 Dai Fu Street, Tai Po Industrial Estate, NT, Hong Kong. China
Tel: 852 3610 3531 (GMT +8)

Main Email: edit...@gigasciencejournal.com

Website: http://www.gigasciencejournal.com
Follow us on Twitter @GigaScience; Find us at FaceBook; Read GigaBlog

Sign up for Article Alerts

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[Laurie Goodman]

Ah my apostrophes around 'fak' were not to indicate their spelling- that was a typo on my part!

I was putting quotes around 'fake' to indicate I was using it as a sweeping word for all forms of reviewer fraud...

In reading it over and seeing my typo- I realized with the apostrophes it gave a majorly incorrect sense of meaning.

-L

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Laurie Goodman, PhD

ORCID ID: 0000-0001-9724-5976
GigaScience, Editor-in-Chief
 

Co-Publishers: BGI and Oxford University Press

BGI-Hong Kong Ltd. 16 Dai Fu Street, Tai Po Industrial Estate, NT, Hong Kong. China
Tel: 852 3610 3531 (GMT +8)
Main Email: edit...@gigasciencejournal.com
Website: http://www.gigasciencejournal.com
Follow us on Twitter @GigaScience; Find us at FaceBook; Read GigaBlog

Sign up for Article Alerts

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On Wed, Apr 26, 2017 at 3:30 PM, Laurie Goodman <lau...@gigasciencejournal.com> wrote:

Jie,

You are spot on about the journals not being rigorous enough. When we spoke with the folks at Xinhun, they asked about what we did to reduce the chance of using a 'fak' reviewer. We stated categorically that we do a very careful assessment of the reviewers we use. We also do not include a place for suggesting reviewers in our online submission system.

Every single journal we have seen needing to retract papers have had editors who are not full time editors, and who are likely to be relieved to not have to seek out a potential reviewer. Worse, if the journal has a system where they input names of reviewers they have used- it can then spread to other journals using that same system.

'Lazy' (Okay- non-rigorous) editors is a big problem that helps further this practice. Publishers can remove the 'suggest a reviewer' option to also reduce the possibility.

Working with BGI, and them working with MDs for research projects, has really shown me what a terrible position this puts MDs in- as you say, they already have enough to do! I think, because of this, some very busy doctors seek out help from companies that say they are writing and editing companies (which they will of course go to since they are non-native English speakers), and then these companies let them know that they can help at more intense levels by writing the paper for the doctor and submitting it etc- and getting it published. So, many of these busy people don't actually realize that these companies are committing fraud- in their name.

We have done some 'tests' on companies in HK to see how far they are willing to take us in the publishing process, and once we start to push for helping write and submit, etc. we get referred to another company -but the email signatures are the same as the original company. It is quite difficult.

This system of:
(1) Pushing jIF (or number of publications) as the main (or only) mechanism for determining promotions and funding
(2) pressed-for-time individuals who have the extra difficult problem of being a non-native English speaker, but who MUST publish

(3) unethical companies that present themselves as editing companies- but actually promote their successes (and thus gain more clients) by doing fraudulent things.
(4) all capped off by non-rigorous editors who make it all of this easier for these papers to get past the "gate"

(5) and so many other smaller practices that play into this as well.
 make this difficult, and definitely not a straightforward thing to tackle... (I doubt it could ever be completely eliminated)

Also- while reviewer fraud is highly discussed in the news right now (primarily because of the blast of high number in retracted papers at once)- there are so many other types of scientific misconduct...

'
Openness on all sides helps with all of this.

-L

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Laurie Goodman, PhD

ORCID ID: 0000-0001-9724-5976
GigaScience, Editor-in-Chief
 

Co-Publishers: BGI and Oxford University Press

BGI-Hong Kong Ltd. 16 Dai Fu Street, Tai Po Industrial Estate, NT, Hong Kong. China
Tel: 852 3610 3531 (GMT +8)

[Jo De]

Hi Jie, Laurie,

Lots of different kinds of 'fak(e)' all over the world and I would therefore like to encourage more discussion and problem solving with respect to academic publishing within our group because this leads to vigilance and the appropriate corrections.

On Wed, Apr 26, 2017 at 3:34 PM, Laurie Goodman <lau...@gigasciencejournal.com> wrote:

Ah my apostrophes around 'fak' were not to indicate their spelling- that was a typo on my part!

I was putting quotes around 'fake' to indicate I was using it as a sweeping word for all forms of reviewer fraud...

In reading it over and seeing my typo- I realized with the apostrophes it gave a majorly incorrect sense of meaning.

-L

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Laurie Goodman, PhD

ORCID ID: 0000-0001-9724-5976
GigaScience, Editor-in-Chief
 

Co-Publishers: BGI and Oxford University Press

BGI-Hong Kong Ltd. 16 Dai Fu Street, Tai Po Industrial Estate, NT, Hong Kong. China
Tel: 852 3610 3531 (GMT +8)

[许洁]

Hi Laurie and Jo,

Thank you for elaborating on this. I agree with you two. I think you are quite right, openness and discussions like this help with all of this.  

Jie

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[David Wojick]

Laurie,

F1000 actually requires that authors nominate reviewers, ten at a time. I submitted an article awhile back and had to go through three rounds of reviewer submissions before they would post my article. It was hard work. 

I take it you think this is a bad practice, but it is very hard for an editor to know who the real experts are for any given article. As Jie notes, the number of retractions is very small, as a percentage of publications. So I wonder if banning author nominations is a good idea. The benefit is getting knowledgable reviewers.

David

Inside Public Access

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[Bev.A...@f1000.com]

David, I’m not sure how far back you submitted your paper to us, but we only ask for half that number of referee suggestions, so I’m not sure how you came to submit “ten at a time” We also manually check the suggestions to make sure they are appropriate.  Bev

Main Email: edit...@gigasciencejournal.com
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Faculty of 1000 and F1000 are trading names of Faculty of 1000 Limited. This e-mail is confidential and should not be used by anyone who is not the original intended recipient. Faculty of 1000 Limited does not accept liability for any statements made which are clearly the sender's own and not expressly made on behalf of Faculty of 1000 Limited. No contracts may be concluded on behalf of Faculty of 1000 Limited by means of e-mail communication. Faculty of 1000 Limited Registered in England and Wales with registered number 3739756 Registered Office Middlesex House, 34-42 Cleveland Street, London W1T 4LB

[David Wojick]

Sorry Bev. It was several years ago so maybe it was 5 not 10. The point is that we went around and around with F1000 requirements that I keep coming up with new lists of recommended reviewers. Of course you check them, in fact you rejected some. I can look up the entire correspondence if we need it.

Laurie's claim is that this should not be done at all, 5 or 10 at a time. How does F1000 respond? I personally like the idea.

David

[Bev.A...@f1000.com]

I wouldn’t want to answer for Laurie, but I think the process of having authors suggest reviewers only becomes problematic if the reviewers suggested are not checked to make sure they are appropriate – we have a manual checking process.  An author may need to come up with more suggestions if the previously suggested reviewers decline which is perhaps why you had to go around the process a few times. 

[Kim Barrett]

On my journal we also never exclusively use author-suggested Reviewers.  But we are discussing other ways to prevent this type of fraud, since attaching a fake email to a legitimate scholar is becoming more common.

Kim E. Barrett, Ph.D.

Distinguished Professor of Medicine

UC San Diego

Sent from my iPhone

[Rick Anderson]

David, I checked out the article you published in F1000 and found your exchange with the reviewers very interesting. Was Ivan Oransky one of the reviewers you proposed?

 

---

Rick Anderson

Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication

Marriott Library, University of Utah

Desk: (801) 587-9989

Cell: (801) 721-1687

rick.a...@utah.edu

[David Wojick]

Sort of, Rick. F1000 provides a starter list of reviewers, which I used at first and Ivan was on it. I had never heard of him. He is actually a journalist, not a scientist.

Both reviewers failed to address my actual findings, which were a taxonomy of funding-induced biases and the prospect for a cascade among these.

So I rejected the review, in some detail. The penalty for this is not being indexed, but still published, which is interesting in its own right. One can read my submitted article, and the negative reviews, and my response, rather than seeing nothing at all due to reviewer rejection. I like this model because it actually displays a discussion. But if one thinks that a reviewer's job is to stop things from being published then this model fails to do that.

David
Inside Public Access

At 01:46 PM 4/27/2017, Rick Anderson wrote:

David, I checked out the article you published in F1000 and found your exchange with the reviewers very interesting. Was Ivan Oransky one of the reviewers you proposed?
 
---
Rick Anderson
Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication
Marriott Library, University of Utah
Desk: (801) 587-9989
Cell: (801) 721-1687
rick.a...@utah.edu
 
From: <osi20...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "Bev.A...@f1000.com" <Bev.A...@f1000.com>
Date: Thursday, April 27, 2017 at 11:39 AM
To: David Wojick <dwo...@craigellachie.us>, "osi20...@googlegroups.com" <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: Latest on retraction of Chines papers
 

I wouldn’t want to answer for Laurie, but I think the process of having authors suggest reviewers only becomes problematic if the reviewers suggested are not checked to make sure they are appropriate – we have a manual checking process. An author may need to come up with more suggestions if the previously suggested reviewers decline which is perhaps why you had to go around the process a few times. 

 

Bev

 

From: osi20...@googlegroups.com [ mailto:osi20...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of David Wojick

Sent: 27 April 2017 15:09

To: osi20...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: Latest on retraction of Chines papers

Sorry Bev. It was several years ago so maybe it was 5 not 10. The point is that we went around and around with F1000 requirements that I keep coming up with new lists of recommended reviewers. Of course you check them, in fact you rejected some. I can look up the entire correspondence if we need it.

Laurie's claim is that this should not be done at all, 5 or 10 at a time. How does F1000 respond? I personally like the idea.

 

David

On Apr 27, 2017, at 9:27 AM, <Bev.A...@f1000.com> wrote:

David, I’m not sure how far back you submitted your paper to us, but we only ask for half that number of referee suggestions, so I’m not sure how you came to submit “ten at a time†We also manually check the suggestions to make sure they are appropriate.  Bev

 

To: osi20...@googlegroups.com

 

Laurie,

 

 

David

Inside Public Access

Jie,

 

This system of:

'

 

-L

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Laurie Goodman, PhD

ORCID ID: 0000-0001-9724-5976

GigaScience, Editor-in-Chief

 

Main Email: edit...@gigasciencejournal.com

Website: http://www.gigasciencejournal.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Hi  Laurie and Jo,

 

 

Also, speaking of the reasons, there are 524 Chinese clinical medicine practitioners whose papers were withdrew involving this incident. For those researchers, the inner motivation is getting promoted. China’s academic evaluating system for medical employees (and all researchers) requires annual output in SCI/SSCI which takes up great in the whole. The more one publishes in SCI/SSCI, the bigger chance for him/her being promoted.  To be honest, it is a rigid system though which costs much time and effert to change it and we are working on it. The fact is that it lacks of medical personnel resources in China while there are so many patients every day. The doctors are all very busy with patients and they don’t have time to write academic papers. This is an objective fact rather than an excuse for cheating. I personally think that the evaluation system which requires them to publish papers is ridiculous.

 

Despite these individual matters, the publisher is the final guard for journal publishing. Publisher should take their responsibilities to filter content for the society. As a “Gate Keeper†the publisher is expected to to complete internal control mechanism for a better administration on journals.

 

It is best for everyone to see that they refuse those cheating papers before publishing. At the meantime, the predatory journals that collude with some third-party organizations should be noticed. It is those journals that provide green path for academic misbehavior.

In the end, resisting and rejecting academic misbehavior is a global mission. All the researchers and publishers should join together to protect integrity of scientific research and international journals.

 

Jie

 

 

School of Information Management

Wuhan University, China

x...@whu.edu.cn

Tel. +86 68755187

 

From: Jo De

Date: 2017-04-25 02:02

To: Laurie Goodman

Joann

 

http://retractionwatch.com/201 7/04/20/new-record-major-publisher-retracting-100-studies-cancer-journal-fake-peer-reviews/

Two things:

 

-L

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Laurie Goodman, PhD

ORCID ID: 0000-0001-9724-5976

GigaScience, Editor-in-Chief

 

Main Email: edit...@gigasciencejournal.com

Website: http://www.gigasciencejournal .com

Follow us on Twitter @GigaScience; Find us at FaceBook; Read Giga Blog

Sign up for Article Alerts

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[Laurie Goodman]

Bev,

I completely agree with you about having reviewers suggested is overall a good thing- your caveat and mine being- that they are carefully checked.

The issue is that caveat- and for publishers with a large bank of journals (and variable editors) it can be an easy stop-gap to keep fake reviewers at bay to simply remove that option.

Personally, I like having suggestions, as it gives me a better sense of the range of people the author finds acceptable for assessing their work. But, again, we check emails, completely avoid any emails that don't go to an institution that we know the person works at, and very carefully look into people whose names we don't recognize.

So really, the elimination of reviewer suggestions from the submission system is more of a publisher-wide way to reduce the impact of less rigorous editors.

My suggested points are just areas that can reduce fraudulent review issues- my main point really is that, overall, the best positive move to reducing this is open peer review, and we're all in the choir on openness... so, I guess that goes without saying.

-L

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Laurie Goodman, PhD

ORCID ID: 0000-0001-9724-5976
GigaScience, Editor-in-Chief
 

Co-Publishers: BGI and Oxford University Press

BGI-Hong Kong Ltd. 16 Dai Fu Street, Tai Po Industrial Estate, NT, Hong Kong. China
Tel: 852 3610 3531 (GMT +8)
Main Email: edit...@gigasciencejournal.com
Website: http://www.gigasciencejournal.com
Follow us on Twitter @GigaScience; Find us at FaceBook; Read GigaBlog

Sign up for Article Alerts

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Twitter @GigaScience; Find us at FaceBook; Read GigaBlog

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Faculty of 1000 and F1000 are trading names of Faculty of 1000 Limited. This e-mail is confidential and should not be used by anyone who is not the original intended recipient. Faculty of 1000 Limited does not accept liability for any statements made which are clearly the sender's own and not expressly made on behalf of Faculty of 1000 Limited. No contracts may be concluded on behalf of Faculty of 1000 Limited by means of e-mail communication. Faculty of 1000 Limited Registered in England and Wales with registered number 3739756 Registered Office Middlesex House, 34-42 Cleveland Street, London W1T 4LB

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[Peter Potter]

For what it’s worth, in the scholarly book publishing world it is routine for acquisitions editors to ask authors to suggest names of reviewers. This doesn’t mean that an editor will necessarily go to the people on that list but I for one always found it valuable to have the names. I would typically pose the question along these lines: “Who are the scholars in your field you most respect and who you would most want critical feedback from?” 

Peter J Potter

Director, Publishing Strategy

Virginia Tech

Newman Library, RM 424 

560 Drillfield Drive

Blacksburg, VA  24061 

540-231-9220

ORCID iD: 0000-0001-7100-5982

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[Angela Cochran]

The big publishers have ways of finding these cases of peer review frauds, albeit after the fact. Or not. We don't actually know how many cases of peer review fraud are detected during review and then the papers rejected. Either way, to my knowledge, none of these publishers are sharing this detective protocol with the rest of us. As the fraudsters figure out that the gig is up with Wiley, Springer, Elsevier, they will come to the smaller publishers and society journals that lack the resources for these kinds of investigations. 

Peer review fraud is one of the things that keep me up at night and I have no idea if it's happened to us or how to detect it before it's too late. 

Angela Cochran

ASCE

On Thu, Apr 27, 2017 at 2:09 PM, Laurie Goodman <lau...@gigasciencejournal.com> wrote:

Bev,

I completely agree with you about having reviewers suggested is overall a good thing- your caveat and mine being- that they are carefully checked.

The issue is that caveat- and for publishers with a large bank of journals (and variable editors) it can be an easy stop-gap to keep fake reviewers at bay to simply remove that option.

Personally, I like having suggestions, as it gives me a better sense of the range of people the author finds acceptable for assessing their work. But, again, we check emails, completely avoid any emails that don't go to an institution that we know the person works at, and very carefully look into people whose names we don't recognize.

So really, the elimination of reviewer suggestions from the submission system is more of a publisher-wide way to reduce the impact of less rigorous editors.

My suggested points are just areas that can reduce fraudulent review issues- my main point really is that, overall, the best positive move to reducing this is open peer review, and we're all in the choir on openness... so, I guess that goes without saying.

-L

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Laurie Goodman, PhD

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Angela Cochran

[Glenn Hampson]

Just to correct the record here because it might be a wee bit awkward for our OSI colleague Dr. Oransky, MD, to do this himself, Ivan is both a journalist and a scientist (in addition to being a journal founder and editor, professor, association leader, TED speaker, etc.---your typical OSI resume J). I suppose some people might quibble about whether MDs are scientists or practitioners---the same goes for some types of professors---but to me anyway that’s really splitting hairs. Sorry---carry on.

 

Glenn Hampson

Executive Director

National Science Communication Institute (nSCI)

Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)

 

 

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[Laurie Goodman]

There have been assessments related to retractions, and reasons thereof. See, for example, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5168538/ looking at retractions in BMC journals.

It notes that retraction rates are really really small compared to amount published (0.07%). But, resesrch in this area show it's rising.

Of the retractions assessed in the above study, they say review misconduct plays the largest role. But this as a large % seems to show up due to the advent of large systematic mechs... which, frankly, are easier to detect...

At any rate, I have limited worry about it at my journal because the editorial team are rigorous, and, more, our review process is completely transparent, our reviewers and readers have full access to all the associated data, software, workflows, etc.. All around that reduces a lot of our concerns about misconduct slipping past us, the reviewers,  and finally the readers/users catching it early.

But, doing all of that does take time and focus, and many places did not have that luxury, plus, the best we can really do is try to substantially limit it: As people have noted in this chain,  those purposely trying to get through the system will find ways. 

[Margaret Winker Cook]

Hi all,
The World Association of Medical Editors has recommendations to avoid
peer reviewer fraud at
http://www.wame.org/about/policy-statements#Best%20Practices%20for%20Peer%20Reviewer%20Selection
. In general we recommend that editors not use all author-recommended
reviewers; a study (which I'll dig up the reference for) has shown
that they tend to be more likely to recommend publication than
reviewers not recommended by authors.
Margaret

Margaret Winker, MD
Secretary, WAME
wame.org
-views are my own.

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