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Animal Ethics Biosafety Human Research Ethics Research Integrity

Faux peer-reviewed journals: a threat to research integrity – BishopBlog (December 2020)

Posted by Dr Gary Allen in Research Integrity on December 20, 2020
Keywords: Analysis, Institutional responsibilities, International, Journal, Publication ethics, Research integrity, Research results, Researcher responsibilities

The Linked Original Item was Posted On December 6, 2020

A busy team meeting at a table

Despite all its imperfections, peer review is one marker of scientific quality – it indicates that an article has been evaluated prior to publication by at least one, and usually several, experts in the field. An academic journal that does not use peer review would not usually be regarded as a serious source and we would not expect to see it listed in a database such as Clarivate Analytic’s Web of Science Core Collection which “includes only journals that demonstrate high levels of editorial rigor and best practice”. Scientists are often evaluated by their citations in Web of Science, with the assumption that this will include only peer-reviewed articles. This makes gaming of citations harder than is the case for less selective databases such as Google Scholar. The selective criteria for inclusion, and claims by Clarivate Analytics to take research integrity very seriously, are presumably the main reasons why academic institutions are willing to pay for access to Web of Science, rather than relying on Google Scholar.

A great blog post on a troubling topic.  With thanks to Julie Simpson for posting to Twitter.

Nevertheless, some journals listed in Web of Science include significant numbers of documents that are not peer-reviewed. I first became aware of this when investigating the publishing profiles of authors with remarkably high rates of publications in a small number of journals. I found that Mark Griffiths, a hyperprolific author who has been interviewed about his astounding rate of publication by the Times Higher Education, has a junior collaborator, Mohammed Mamun, who clearly sees Griffiths as a role model and is starting to rival him in publication rate. Griffiths is a co-author on 31 of 33 publications authored by Mamun since 2019. While still an undergraduate, Mamun has become the self-styled Director of the Undergraduate Research Organization in Dhaka, subsequently renamed as the Centre for Health Innovation, Networking, Training, Action and Research – Bangladesh. These institutions do not appear to have any formal link with an academic institution, though on ORCID, Mamun lists an ongoing educational affiliation to Jahangirnagar University. His H-index from Web of Science is 11. This drops if one excludes self-citations, which constitute around half of his citations, but nevertheless, this is remarkable for an undergraduate.

Of the 31 papers listed on Web of Science as coauthored by Mamun and Griffiths, 19 are categorised as letters to the Editor. Letters are a rather odd and heterogeneous category. In most journals they will be brief comments on papers published in the journal, or responses to such comments, and in such cases it is not unusual for the editor to make a decision to publish or not without seeking peer review. However, the letters coauthored by Griffiths and Mamun go beyond this kind of content, and include some brief reports of novel data, as well as case reports on suicide or homicide gleaned from press reports*. I took a closer look at three journals where these letters appeared to try and understand how such material fitted in with their publication criteria.

Read the rest of this discussion piece

Related Reading

(China) China’s ‘paper mills’ are grinding out fake scientific research at an alarming rate – coda (Isobel Cockerell | November 2020)

(South Africa) Publish, profit, predate, perish and peer review – University World News (Patrick Fish | October 2020)

‘An isolated incident’: Should reviewers check references? – Retraction Watch (Adam Marcus | September 2020)

(Taiwan) Low ethics standards encourage plagiarism – Taipei Times (Tai Po-fen 戴伯芬 | August 2020)

‘TripAdvisor for peer review’ targets publishing bias – Times Higher Education (Jack Grove | January 2020)

(France) He Was a Science Star. Then He Promoted a Questionable Cure for Covid-19 – New York Times Magazine (Scott Sayare | May 2020)

‘Dodgy’ articles in academic journals threatens integrity of South African science – News24 (Tony Carnie | September 2017)

(China) Nearly 500 researchers guilty of misconduct, says Chinese gov’t investigation (Alison McCook | August 2017)

(China) Fake peer review, forged authors, fake funding: Everything’s wrong with brain cancer paper – Retraction Watch (Victoria Stern | July 2017)

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