Springer and BioMed Central are retracting 58 articles published across seven journals this week, after a thorough investigation which revealed evidence of plagiarism, peer review and authorship manipulation, suggestive of attempts to subvert the peer review and publication system to inappropriately obtain or allocate authorship.
BioMed Central has identified 28 articles that will be retracted and is investigating 40 more articles. Springer has identified 30 articles that will be retracted, with a further 9 articles that need further investigation.
The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) has been notified and retraction notices will be published this week. Not all of the articles showed evidence of all of these issues (plagiarism, peer review and authorship manipulation) but each of them demonstrated at least one. The decision to retract these articles is solely to correct the scientific record.
Alongside investigation into the identified papers, action has been taken to ensure that no further compromised papers from this group can continue through to publication. In addition, policies on changes to the authorship list have been revised.
As a matter of course, an audit of BioMed Central journals to track adherence to editorial policy was conducted early this year. This has now been updated to look for potential hallmarks of abuse, such as non-specific or shared email addresses, assess peer review quality and look for changes in manuscript titles, authorship and content.
In addition, Springer has initiated a task force to better understand current patterns in abuse cases based on these experiences, with the aim to further develop checks and balances.
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