“Listen to the science” is a phrase we have not stopped hearing since the so-called Pandemic hit the US. Not only do the powers that be, NOT listen to the science and are allowing injury. We now have researchers, who are literally, “The Science”, gaming the system. Who are we to believe anymore?
Because of unethical actions, one of the largest open-access journal publishers in the world is retracting more than 500 papers.
Hindawi, a company based in London that puts out more than 200 peer-reviewed journals in many different fields, said that its research team found “irregularities” in the peer review process in some of the journals in June.
“Before articles are published in any Hindawi journal, they go through a long list of checks to ensure they are honest. After a thorough investigation, we found that the suspicious and unethical actions that led to these problems in the peer review process were the cause. Since we learned about this unethical behavior and process breach, we’ve added more checks and improved our processes. We’re still doing that,” Liz Ferguson, a senior vice president for Hindawi’s U.S.-based parent company, said in a Sept. 28 statement.
Five hundred eleven papers will be taken down because of the investigation.
Since August 2020, all of the papers have been out in the world.
The papers that are being taken back were published in 16 different journals.
Ferguson says that some authors and editors who worked on the articles may have been “unwitting participants” in the scheme. She noted that “manipulating the peer review process and the infrastructure that supports it” was part of the plan.
Richard Bennett, vice president of researcher and publishing services at Hindawi, told the Retraction Watch website that the review found “coordinated peer review rings” in which reviewers and editors worked together to get papers through peer review.
Ferguson and Bennett didn’t know who any of the suspects were.
Bennett said the investigation began when an editor called attention to some strange papers. He also said that the people who were found to be “compromised” by the review would be banned from Hindawi journals. People were also said to be “possibly compromised.”
“These efforts and the people who participate in them slow scientific progress and hurt the reliability of scholarly research. We will not stand for it,” Ferguson said.
She also said the company had talked to other publishers and groups in the field.
As the investigation goes on, more retractions are likely.
Some Hindawi journals are Advances in Agriculture, the Canadian Journal of Infectious Diseases and Medical Microbiology, and the Journal of Nanotechnology.