Publishing with Integrity
@fake_journals
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Looking at all aspects of ethics in publishing incl. #PredatoryPublishing , #Papermills , #SellingAuthorships , #CitationManipulation , #ImpactFactors , #PeerReview
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Pinned Tweet
In 2022, this author has published 520 articles (that is more than one article a day). 466 (89.62%) of those articles were letters.
#HyperProductiveAuthors
Source: Scopus (31 May 2024)
3
5
22
.
How the Big Five Academic Publishers Profit from Article Processing Charges
Spoiler alert : Their revenue was over US$ 1 billion between 2015-2018
A recent paper looks at the "big 5" publishers (
@ElsevierConnect
,
@Sage_Publishing
,
@SpringerNature
,
@tandfonline
and…
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150
234
"MDPI journal undergoing reevaluation at Scopus, indexing on hold" |
@RetractionWatch
|
#MDPIPublisher
|
@Scopus
|
@Sus_MDPI
|
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104
182
The article has been retracted.
.
Frontiers paper, and its generated images, are being investigated after an Expression of Concern was raised.
This paper from
@FrontiersIn
has been getting some interest recently (it has to be recently, as it was only published on 13 Feb). You can see the paper here:…
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23
53
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162
We have taken a look at the Google Scholar profile of Kumba Digdowiseiso (following the
@RetractionWatch
article: ). So far, in 2024, he has published (163 articles / 104 days) = 1.57 articles each day.
Be interesting to see how this develops in 2024.
5
54
137
New blog post: MDPI, Frontiers and Hindawi journals may be downgraded in Finland
@MDPIOpenAccess
,
@FrontiersIn
,
@Hindawi
3
70
125
Been looking at the publication record of Kumba Digdowiseiso. In 2024 (so far) he has published 163 papers. 29 of those papers have been published in the International Journal of Social Service and Research, across two issues.
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35
117
"Elisabeth Bik, expert in scientific integrity: ‘We need to slow down scientific publishing’ " |
@MicrobiomDigest
6
41
103
"Honorary authorship is highly prevalent in health sciences: systematic review and meta-analysis of surveys" |
@SciReports
1
35
95
Looking at
@Scopus
, here are the 11 publications that Jeffrey Beall has written (sorted by the number of times they have been cited).
We note, he has written a lot more papers (about 40) on predatory publishing but these are in journals not indexed by Scopus, so have not been…
7
46
93
.
Review Mill at MDPI
Very interesting article by
@maoviedogarcia
, who looks at
@MDPIOpenAccess
.
#MDPIPublisher
This would make a very interesting peer reviewed article (suitably written for a scientific journal) so that this become part of the peer reviewed scientific archive.…
5
53
91
"Journal retracts 31 papers, bans authors and reviewers after losing its impact factor" |
@retractionWatch
|
@MicrobiomDigest
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93
This is just crazy, how blatant this is.
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Concerns about data integrity across 263 papers by one author
0
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Review mills identified as a new form of peer-review fraud
Tag:
@ChemistryWorld
,
@maoviedogarcia
,
@robinson_julia
We have been following the posts by
@maoviedogarcia
, who has been highlighting issues with the peer review processes of
@MDPIOpenAccess
(and it is a credit to…
5
48
73
Is science a pyramid scheme? The correlation between an author's position in the academic hierarchy and her scientific output per year
5
34
70
"Sneaked references: Fabricated reference metadata distort citation counts"
This, in our view, is a very important paper.
We recall reading a preprint and glad to see that it is now published.
@gcabanac
|
@lonnibesancon
4
31
66
Very good question ("How can this happen in a regular peer-review paper?"). You might imagine that a pharse buried deep in the paper might get through, but the first sentence in the introduction.
We assume that
@ElsevierConnect
will investigate.
🤖 So
#ChatGPT
wrote the first sentence of this
@ElsevierConnect
article. Any other parts of the article too? How come none of the coauthors, Editor-in-Chief, reviewers, typesetters noticed? How can this happen with regular peer-review?
137
1K
5K
3
18
63
Thought we'd take a look at who has published the most
@MDPIOpenAccess
papers this year.
... and the winner is Gasbarrini, A., who has published 63 papers, in 18 journals from
#MDPI
's portfolio.
If we take a rough
#APC
of USD 2,000, that is USD 126,000. Wonder who funded that?
4
25
63
.
@MDPIOpenAccess
,
@FrontiersIn
and
@Hindawi
journals may be downgraded in Finland by the end of 2024.
Here some things that sprung to mind when we read this.
1⃣ It would be useful when (and if) this comes to pass that the reasons why are given. Most people will assume that it…
Not confirmed yet but all MDPI, Frontiers & Hindawi journals planned to be erased (level 0) from Finnish academic assessment by end of 2024. Should be clear that if you're a researcher here, a high time to stop submitting/reviewing for those journals.
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515
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We are really pleased that
@RetractionWatch
and
@CrossrefOrg
have joined forces with one benefit being that the Retraction Watch database is now freely available.
Our first analysis is to look at the top ten publishers by the number of retractions. Of course, these figures have…
2
29
59
If you are interested in
#PaperMills
, here are five papers published in 2023.
===
1) Fast-growing open-access journals lose impact factors Web of Science delists some 50 journals, including one of the world’s largest (2023) Science.
@ScienceMagazine
…
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Automatically listing senior members of departments as co-authors is highly prevalent in health sciences: meta-analysis of survey research - Scientific Reports
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Excessive use of words like ‘commendable’ and ‘meticulous’ suggests ChatGPT has been used in thousands of scientific studies
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We recently captured all the papers that look at
#PredatoryPublishingBeall
's List. This is the most cited paper:
Access paper here:
See more papers here:
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.
The Google Scholar profile of Sayed Mohamed Eldin shows that he publishes one paper a day.
We have been tweeting about Sayed Mohamed Eldin (for example, see ).
In response to one of our tweets
@PaulGlazier
was good enough to send us the Google Scholar…
.
The 463 publications of Sayed Mohamed Eldin, all published since 2022.
We have previously tweeted about Sayed Mohamed Eldin, noting that he had published 61 papers in 2022, 378 papers in 2023 and (so far) 24 papers in 2024. The main tweet was published as a blog article (see…
4
21
37
3
17
55
.
Frontiers paper, and its generated images, are being investigated after an Expression of Concern was raised.
This paper from
@FrontiersIn
has been getting some interest recently (it has to be recently, as it was only published on 13 Feb). You can see the paper here:…
3
23
53
"Signs of undeclared ChatGPT use in papers mounting" Another great spot by
@gcabanac
. Surely, the paper has to be investigated and (possibly) retracted?
@RetractionWatch
3
24
52
.
Who should pay for open-access publishing? What are the alternatives to Article Processing Charges?
In an interesting paper from
@scrinders
, writing in
@Nature
, various alternative to APCs (Article Processing Charges) are discussed. Here are the highlights from the article.…
4
30
50
"Publication integrity: what is it, why does it matter, how it is safeguarded and how could we do better?"|
@tandfonline
0
20
49
We love a quirky title, and this recent paper delivers one - as well as looking at
#PredatoryPublishing
.
#Orthodontics
#OpenAccess
0
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An
@ElsevierConnect
article that looks how authors are being coerced into citing papers which, perhaps, are not appropriate for the paper under review.
0
15
45
"
@ElsevierConnect
investigating articles linked to controversial French researcher" |
@RetractionWatch
0
20
44
"Costly invite? Scientists hit with massive bills after speaking at COVID-19 ‘webinars’" by
@mcatanzaro
, writing in
@ScienceMagazine
. One of those articles where you just want a quick look, but cannot stop reading.
1
23
44
.
Guest editor of an MDPI special issue is author of almost half of the papers in the special issue.
We recently saw a post from
@clementFFF
(see ) where it was noted that a guest editor to an
@MDPIOpenAccess
special issue had seven papers published by one…
@RemoteSens_MDPI
Guest Editor "Fuzhong Weng" is co-authoring 7/15 articles is this special issue.
➡️ ~47% of total papers.
This is not in agreement with your ethical chart, sorry 🤷♂️ ...
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We note on
@PubPeer
that
@ElsevierConnect
had responded to your tweet, saying that they were investigating this with the authors and editors.
Surely, the conversation is an easy one.
Editor: Did you use ChatGPT?
Authors: Yes
Editor: Did you declare its use?
Authors: No…
🤖 So
#ChatGPT
wrote the first sentence of this
@ElsevierConnect
article. Any other parts of the article too? How come none of the coauthors, Editor-in-Chief, reviewers, typesetters noticed? How can this happen with regular peer-review?
137
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5K
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"Predatory journals: How to recognise and keep clear!" |
@Sage_Publishing
|
#PredatoryPublishing
0
25
43
.
@MDPI
to investigate possible
#papermill
activity
#MDPIPublisher
Good to see that
@MDPIOpenAccess
are investigating potential
#papermill
activity and
#citation
misconduct.
Perhaps this has come about due to the excellent work of
@maoviedogarcia
. If it is due to the…
3
14
42
Spain wants to change how it evaluates scientists—and end the ‘dictatorship of papers’
1
18
40
Earlier this year (3 Jan '23), a Chinese university announced it would no longer recognise papers published in
@MDPIOpenAccess
,
@FrontiersIn
or
@Hindawi
journals for things like promotion applications. You can read more about it here:
#MDPIPublishing
2
20
40
.
What is the impact of Sayed Mohamed Eldin's articles?
This author has posted 463 papers in a couple of years. We thought we'd look at how many times his papers have been cited. You can see the list of papers here: . They are are sorted by the number of…
1
15
38
Really interesting article by
@ChristosCPetrou
writing in
@scholarlykitchn
. “Reputation and Publication Volume at
@MDPIOpenAccess
and
@FrontiersIn
”
1
23
37
Since looking at
@MDPIOpenAccess
, the largest number of comments we have had (many DM) is about
@Animals_MDPI
. We are going to have a few tweets that foucs on that journal. We will present facts, with no accusation (either way), whether they are predatory or not.
#MDPIPublisher
4
12
38
This is worrying
60% to 70% of academic misconduct goes unreported (from survey of around 1,000 faculty)
#academicintegrity
#ICAI2024
#ICAI2024Calgary
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37
.
The 463 publications of Sayed Mohamed Eldin, all published since 2022.
We have previously tweeted about Sayed Mohamed Eldin, noting that he had published 61 papers in 2022, 378 papers in 2023 and (so far) 24 papers in 2024. The main tweet was published as a blog article (see…
4
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37
"When authors play the predatory journals’ own game" To us, the sad part (and most worrying) aspect of this abstract is the section we have highlighted.
@Nature
0
20
37
.
@MDPIOpenAccess
special issue of
@diagnostic_mdpi
.
Four out of the five papers (80%) co-authored by the guest editor.
Tag:
#MDPIPublisher
===
⭕️The Special Issue
1⃣ Somebody brought to our attention a special issue of
@diagnostic_mdpi
, titled "Role of Artificial…
2
17
36
.
The publication record of Sayed Mohamed Eldin
Spoiler alert: He has published more than one paper every day in 2023.
In a recent post ()
@nickwizzo
posted about Sayed Mohamed Eldin of Future University in Egypt. We thought we would take a look…
A retraction: "In summary, the author names Nevzat Akkurt, Mustafa Z. Mahmoud and ElSayed M. Tag El Din were added to the revised paper without explanation and without exceptional approval by the editor"
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"Emerging plagiarism in peer-review evaluation reports: a tip of the iceberg?"
0
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36
We don't know the details/background of this case, so cannot comment sensibly on that - only to say that we have never seen anything that suggests that
@MicrobiomDigest
is a destructive force to scientific advancement - very much the opposite in fact.
We woudl also say.
▶️ If…
Stock investor
@MattNachtrab
is now sending emails to journalists with a story pitch about my "pivotal role" in the insurance fraud that the uBiome founders (not me) have been charged with, and stating I should be sued and ostracized, because I am wasting everybody's time.
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The Committee on Publication Ethics,
@C0PE
, have a discussion document on
#PredatoryPublishing
. It's a couple of years old, but still very topical and well worth a read. You can access the report here:
0
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35
.
The researchers taking on fraudulent science
"Many researchers, however, end up finding negative results — those that do not support their initial hypotheses. While such studies are crucial to the scientific literature, the 'whole industry' of journals encourages scientists…
1
15
34
"Academic Integrity in the Social Sciences" edited by
@GuyCurtis10
. We hope to get a look at this book soon.
4
14
32
Recently published article on the
#ChatGPT
and the dangers it present to
#PredatoryPublishing
|
@Laura_Dormer
|
@LearnedPublish
|
@alpsp
|
@Graham_Kendall
|
2
12
33
We have two comments/questions:
If you don't have the APC costs covered, why do you submit to IEEE Access? It is fully open access. Serious Question: What was your plan?
Adding somebody has a co-author after acceptance is a no-no. In fact, unless an author has made a…
3
13
32
.
Hindawi retracted over 8,000 articles in 2022. That is almost 22 articles every day.
Does anybody know how many articles they published, so we can get a percentage figure?
@SmutClyde
=== Context ===
Drawing on the data from
@nickwizzo
's recent post…
4
29
32
@KamounLab
@plant_pathology
We have never seen this before. This is truly SHOCKING. It's a whole new issue. We are writing some blog posts at the moment, for a new blog that we will release soon. Can we please use this is a case study and report it.
2
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1
22
31
.
Will these papers now be retracted?
Good work by
@RetractionWatch
in raising this matter (see ) and kudos to the university for addressing this issue.
As well as adding authors to papers, without their knowledge, Kumba Digdowiseiso's publication record…
1
10
31
Almost 1,000 papers have been published THIS YEAR that have ChatGPT in the title
Since
#ChatGPT
came to the general public's attention in November 2022, it has been subject to scrutiny from almost all walks of life. The research community has not been slow to investigate this…
4
19
31
Great resource from
@BMCMedicine
, authored by
@SamanthaCukier
,
@helal_lucas
,
@ManojLalu
,
@DanielleBRice__
,
@dmoher
et al. giving a table of 53 references to
#PredatoryPublishing
checklists. We have now found our definitive (much needed) guide.
#OpenAccess
0
15
31
.
We asked ChatGPT to write an email as if it were the editor of a predatory journal and it needed to attract submissions. This is what it said.
ChatGPT Prompt: "I am the editor of a predatory journal and I have to write to potential authors to try and persuade them to submit…
3
16
30
"Correction is courageous" This is good to see - everybody makes honest mistakes |
@ScienceAlert
1
10
30
1⃣ Why did
@ElsevierConnect
just change the paper, not telling us why? They should have done this via a corrigendum or an erratum, surely?
2⃣ The fact the authors used an
#LLM
and did not acknowledge it goes against the publishers guidelines. Should this be an automatic…
🤖 Authors put
#ChatGPT
's “Regenerate Response” in an
@ElsevierConnect
article of the Natural Language Processing Journal. I reported the issue in July . Elsevier operated a *stealth revision* in September. Who cares about a proper corrigendum?
#VOR
#trust
1
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70
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31
.
Don't breed cobras
"In the 1800s, British colonists in India set about trying to reduce the cobra population, which was making life and trade very difficult in Delhi. They began to pay a bounty for dead cobras. The strategy very quickly resulted in the widespread breeding of…
0
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30
.
There appears to be a black market for MDPI vouchers?
We would welcome
@MDPIOpenAccess
to respond to the questions we pose below as, we are sure, they are as keen as us not to see their voucher initiative abused.
With regard to the image:
⭕️It looks like "they" are looking…
3
20
29
.
@PredatoryReport
has listed all 199
@FrontiersIn
journals on its preadtory publishers list. The reasons for this decsion are given here: .
#PredatoryPublishing
. What are your thoughts on all Frontiers' journals being labelled as predatory?
2
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29
Haha, as you say h-index 🚀.
We have made no secret that this is our favorite spoof paper (for example see, ).
We just wanted to see the context in which this paper was cited (see image). It shows that this is also a personal favorite of Russell N. van…
3
6
29
The most highly cited paper, on predatory publishing, in
#Scientometrics
is a retracted paper.
Using
@Scopus
and searching for "Predatory Publish*" in titles, abstracts and keywords and then looking at all the articles published by
#Scientometrics
(a
@springerpub
journal), it…
3
19
29
"Editorial actions taken to reduce publishing references from predatory sources: A case study" |
@LearnedPublish
|
@alpsp
|
#PredatoryPublishing
0
16
29
Now that
@RetractionWatch
and
@CrossrefOrg
have joined forces, which is really good news, one benefit is that the Retraction Watch database is now freely available.
This analysis looks at the top ten countries who have had papers retracted.
This is not the easiest of analysis…
2
11
27
"Science’s fake-paper problem: high-profile effort will tackle paper mills: Poor-quality studies are polluting the literature — a group will study the businesses that produce them to stem the flow of bogus research." |
@scrinders
|
@Nature
1
22
28
.
We had a quick look at this paper. Our thoughts are:
1⃣ To cite 29 retracted papers is a lot. Either they were unlucky, or there is a lot of papers being retracted in that area of research?
2⃣ The paper cites 462 papers. This means that 6.27% of the cited papers have been…
😵 Published in October 2023 with **29 retracted references** in its biography: a
@FrontOncology
review on MicroRNAs, long non-coding RNAs, and circular RNAs and gynecological cancers. How reliable is this review article?
#FeetOfClay
#DominoEffect
8
30
86
2
10
27
"Whistleblowers flagged 300 scientific papers for retraction. Many journals ghosted them" |
@JeffreyBrainard
|
@ScienceMagazine
1
15
28
.
New blog post: "How big is science’s fake-paper problem?"
@Richvn
|
@ClearSkiesAdam
|
@MicrobiomDigest
|
@JAByrneSci
|
@RetractionWatch
|
@ivanoransky
|
@C0PE
0
15
27
"Research integrity and academic medicine: the pressure to publish and research misconduct"
0
9
27
.
New blog post: Three books which address predatory publishing.
Tag:
@amykoerber
|
@ArdonDryer
|
@EkoLyombe
|
@slinacre
|
@DrSarahEaton
|
@OpenBookPublish
|
@springerpub
|
@TraceyBretag
|
@ireneglen
0
18
27
"Using automated analysis of the bibliography to detect potential research integrity issues" |
@LearnedPublish
|
@alpsp
1
11
25
.
@LearnedPublish
tops the list (actually equal first with one other journal) with regard to the number of papers published on
#PredatoryPublishing
. Thay have published 14 papers.
We thought it was worth listing them, as it would not be bad list to start with if you are new to…
3
14
27
A recent tweet by
@Nickwizzo
(), which showed the prolific research output of Sayed Mohamed Eldin, reminded us of the paper below () which showed that there is a reviewer that has reviewed seven papers a day EVERY day for a year.
0
13
27
"Academics use imaginary data in their research: Academia values the appearance of truth over actual truth" |
@reason
1
7
27
.
Hindawi has retracted over 10,000 articles in recent years. Over 85% of them were from China.
@SmutClyde
=== Context ===
Drawing on the data from
@nickwizzo
's recent post (), we graphed the number of
@Hindawi
retractions by country, showing the top ten.…
1
16
27
.
The International Journal of Social Service and Research claims (or at least gives the impression) that it is indexed by Scopus, but it is not.
Taking a look at the International Journal of Social Service and Research ()
#IJSSR_FJN
1️⃣ Looking at item…
1
17
26
"Journal retracts more than 50 studies from Saudi Arabia for faked authorship" |
@RetractionWatch
1
15
25
"The Use of Artificial Intelligence in Writing Scientific Review Articles" |
1
11
26
"How to cover academic research fraud and scientific errors" Really interesting article, and excellent insights, from
@JournoResource
featuring advice from
@MicrobiomDigest
,
@ivanoransky
and
@Jodiscohen
0
11
25
.
Editors publish one of their own papers in three days when the average time is 282 days.
Industrial Management & Data Systems, an
@EmeraldGlobal
journal (
@Scopus
CiteScore 8.3 (Q1),
@Clarivate
Impact Factor 5.5 (Q1) has published a paper co-authored by Hair and Chong.…
1
9
26
"How to catch a scientific fraud" An Article from
@voxdotcom
about the work of
@MicrobiomDigest
|
@byrdala
1
9
26
"Papers and peer reviews with evidence of ChatGPT writing" Great initiative by
@RetractionWatch
, with the real kudos going to
@gcabanac
0
16
25
"A survey of biomedical journals to detect editorial bias and nepotistic behavior"
@PLOS
@PLOSBiology
@NaudetFlorian
@IoanaA_Cristea
@dmoher
@deevybee
@Clara_Locher
1
9
25