In November 2014 BioMed Central announced that it had uncovered systematic abuse within the peer review process of a number of its journals. This abuse seems to have been coordinated by a number of third-party agencies that were helping authors to get published in well-respected scholarly journals in exchange for a fee.
In the weeks following this announcement, Hindawi took part in a number of meetings with other publishers in order to share information that might help uncover similar kinds of abuse within the peer review processes of their journals. Although the scale of this type of peer review fraud is difficult to measure, similar cases have been reported by at least half a dozen publishers, which have resulted in the retraction of a significant number of articles in recent years.
In response to the concerns that were discussed during these meetings, Hindawi launched an in-depth investigation to uncover any systematic efforts to circumvent the peer review process of its journals. Hindawi decided to analyze the peer review records as well as the log files from its Manuscript Tracking System for each of the over 180,000 manuscripts that were submitted during 2013 and 2014, which includes roughly 57,000 accepted articles, in order to uncover any cases of peer review fraud.
The peer review process used in Hindawi's journals depends in large part on the expertise of its Editorial Board Members as well as its Special Issue Guest Editors, who are responsible for overseeing the peer review process of submitted manuscripts. However, Editors are required to solicit review reports from external peer reviewers before being able to recommend an article for publication, and if the majority of the submitted review reports recommend rejection, the article cannot be accepted for publication. In cases where an Editor recommends that an article should be accepted, their name is listed as the Academic Editor on the final published version of the article.
Prior to the investigation that Hindawi initiated in late 2014, Editors were free to solicit review reports from any reviewer that they felt would be appropriate based solely on their own discretion. As a result of Hindawi's investigation into its peer review process, it became clear that one potential vulnerability was the lack of any independent verification of the peer reviewers who were selected by an Editor to review a submitted manuscript. If an Editor decided to subvert the journal's peer review process they could do so by creating fake reviewer identities and then use these fake identities to submit the positive review reports that are required before the article can be accepted for publication.
In order to identify any cases where Editors may have created fake reviewer accounts, Hindawi conducted a systematic analysis of the log files from its Manuscript Tracking System in order to identify any potentially concerning cases. Any manuscripts that were identified as potentially concerning were then individually reviewed by Hindawi's staff in order to verify the identities of the external peer reviewers who took part in the review process. In cases where review reports were submitted from personal (rather than institutional) email accounts, Hindawi's staff actively verified these email accounts to ensure that they did in fact belong to the intended reviewer.
As a result of this verification process, Hindawi's staff identified three Editors who appear to have subverted the peer review process by creating fraudulent reviewer accounts and using these accounts to submit favourable review reports. Hindawi's staff then investigated all previous manuscripts handled by these Editors in order to look for similar cases of abuse in the past. In total, Hindawi identified 32 articles that were recommended for publication on the basis of review reports from these fraudulent reviewer accounts. Hindawi has not uncovered the motivations for this abuse, and it is not clear whether the authors of these manuscripts took part in, or were even aware of, these fraudulent review practices.
After finalising the results of its internal investigation, Hindawi consulted with COPE in order to determine the appropriate course of action for the 32 articles that had been accepted on the basis of fraudulent peer review reports. After reviewing the details of Hindawi's investigation, COPE's recommended course of action was to have independent Editorial Board Members re-review these 32 published articles, and if the Editors determine that any of these articles are unsuitable for publication they should be retracted. Hindawi is now moving ahead with this re-review process, and will be working with COPE to ensure that any articles that need to be retracted are handled in accordance with COPE guidelines. Moreover, Hindawi will be providing a detailed report about its investigation to the institutions of the three Editors who created these fraudulent reviewer accounts so that they may conduct their own investigations.
Apart from helping to uncover these cases of peer review fraud, Hindawi's investigation has resulted in a number of additional procedures designed to prevent similar cases of abuse from happening in the future. Most importantly, Hindawi's editorial staff now actively verify the identity of every reviewer who takes part in the peer review process for any of Hindawi's journals.
