(16 Jul 2026) Overwhelming submission volumes, coupled with easy access to artificial intelligence tools making misconduct far easier, are increasing the pressure on editors and peer reviewers, which is turning once-rare jobs for research integrity specialists into commonplace ones at publishers. A spokesperson for Taylor & Francis says the company’s publishing and ethics team “more…
(21 Jul 2026) A second-year medical student in Nepal is at the center of an international research network churning out everything from systematic reviews and meta-analyses to case reports and database studies, Retraction Watch has learned. The student, Raghabendra Kumar Mahato, leverages this network, which includes nearly 1,000 members connected through the WhatsApp messaging platform, to…
(10 Jul 2026) The National Health Commission released on Friday 28 cases of research misconduct involving data fabrication, paper trading and guest authorship. The cases involve researchers from hospitals in Shanxi, Jiangxi and Guangdong provinces, as well as Chongqing, the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region and the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. In one case, researchers…
(8 Jul 2026) Indonesian authorities are widening their investigation into a case of suspected identity and research fraud at an overseas medical conference, which has exposed gaps in academic oversight and revived concerns about abuses in the nation’s system of publication-driven promotion for academia. The Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology has set up a…
(27 May 2026) China’s academic world has been thrown into turmoil after a former doctoral student launched a series of high-profile allegations accusing some of the country’s most prominent scholars of suspected research misconduct and data manipulation. The whistleblower, known online as “Geng Tongxue” (“Student Geng”), has rapidly become one of the most closely-watched figures on Chinese…
(28 May 2026) Researchers in Vietnam who fabricate data or plagiarize papers may be permanently barred from future scientific work, according to new guidance from the country’s Ministry of Science and Technology. The new framework, announced May 25, requires science and technology organizations to implement rules against research misconduct, and it outlines a process for investigating…
(11 May 2026) While Elsevier outcompetes other publishers in terms of sheer volume, it also has the lowest retraction rate and highest rate of reinstating articles among nine top publishers of scholarly articles, a recent study has found. The study also found a tenth publisher to be an outlier in terms of reasons for retraction. “Every publisher…
(6 May 2026) The Forensic Scientometrics (FoSci) movement has published its first report, bringing together leading experts from across the research investigative community to document, scrutinise and address a critical issue: the manipulation of global research. The FoSci Report 2026: Understanding, Detecting, and Documenting Manipulation in the Research Ecosystem, has been launched at this week’s 9th World…
(6 May 2026) Artificial intelligence (AI) tools designed to execute end-to-end projects, from coming up with hypotheses to running and writing up experiments, are increasingly popular with researchers—and increasingly skilled. But a new study shows these tools can stealthily violate norms of research integrity. Computer scientist Nihar Shah of Carnegie Mellon University and colleagues looked…
(4 Mar 2026) Research integrity in Australia may be at risk, the Australian Research Council and the National Health and Medical Research Council have warned. The ARC and the NHMRC announced a joint national review of the research integrity system on 23 February, saying there is a “lack of consistent, sector-wide data on research integrity…