Abstract
Following an investigation in line with the guidance issued by COPE, the publisher has detected one or more of the following indicators in submissions and in the peer review process underlying the acceptance of articles: Patterns of citation manipulation, including citations irrelevant to the research article Incoherent, extraneous text and Tortured phrases [1] Potential unauthorized third-party involvement in the submission process Evidence to suggest collusion between authors and reviewers that was not detected prior to publication Citations to research articles now retracted due to indicators of third-party involvement and manipulated peer review [2]
These indicators raise concerns about the authenticity of the research and the peer review process underlying the following articles. The Publisher regrets that these were not flagged during the journal’s editorial and peer review processes and acknowledges the anonymous volunteers on PubPeer and PPS “Feet of Clay” [2] whose observations complemented our internal investigation.
References
Cabanac G., Labbé C. and Magazinov A., Tortured phrases: A dubious writing style emerging in science. Evidence of critical issues affecting established journals, ArXiv, abs/2107.06751 (2021).
Cabanac G., Chain retraction: how to stop bad science propagating through the literature [Comment], Nature 632(8027) (2024), 977–979. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-02747-1