(5 Jan 2024) China’s Ministry of Education has asked universities to look for possible academic misconduct following “massive” retractions of research papers submitted by Chinese researchers at some foreign publications last year, according to the websites of several universities. Henan Finance University, based in Zhengzhou, Henan province, is among the universities. It said in a…
The number of articles being retracted rose sharply this year. Integrity experts say that this is only the tip of the iceberg. (12 Dec 2023) The number of retractions issued for research articles in 2023 has passed 10,000 — smashing annual records — as publishers struggle to clean up a slew of sham papers and…
(15 Nov 2023) Interactions and collaborations between the Chinese research community and international scholarly publishers are as numerous and wide-ranging as at any point in past 20 years, during which China has become the world’s top producer of research papers. Yet in some ways the perception gap between these two groups is widening. Some of our…
More rigorous checking targets hyper-authorship, excessive self-citation and unusual patterns of group citation activity (18 Nov 2023) The Highly Cited Researchers list for 2023 recognizes 6,849 influential researchers at universities, research institutes and commercial organizations around the world who have demonstrated significant and broad influence in their research. However, Clarivate’s Institute for Scientific Information (ISI)…
(8 Nov 2023) Elisabeth Bik has made a career of being a data vigilante. What should mainstream scientific journals learn from her? Vox talked with Bik about her work, but also discussed what academic journals should do to make sure these problems aren’t published in the first place. Read the article in full…
Pilot program will detect duplicate submissions that may indicate paper mill activity (12 Oct 2023) STM Solutions today announced the launch of a pilot program to detect duplicate submissions to scholarly publications. Submitting the same manuscript to multiple journals simultaneously is, in most cases, against publisher policies and often indicates the work of paper mills,…
An algorithm that takes just seconds to scan a paper for duplicated images racks up more suspicious images than a person (3 Oct 2023) Scientific-image sleuth Sholto David blogs about image manipulation in research papers, a pastime that has exposed him to many accounts of scientific fraud. But other scientists “are still a little bit…
(27 Sep 2023) Since its launch Retraction Watch has done much to highlight the value of research integrity and publishing standards. Discussing the recent acquisition by Crossref of Retraction Watch’s database of retracted articles, Ivan Oransky and Rachael Lammey highlight the value of this data and the difficulties of making it openly and sustainably accessible. …
(1 Sep 2023) Students and academics who use artificial intelligence tools to ‘ghostwrite’ essays or dissertations risk having their degrees revoked according to a new draft Degree Law to tackle misconduct, including plagiarism that is currently before China’s National People’s Congress (NPC). The draft law, submitted to the Standing Committee of the NPC this week,…
(24 Aug 2023) Australia’s academics are grappling with how to handle investigations into scientific misconduct. Unlike many other countries, the nation does not have an independent body to oversee such probes; instead, universities and research institutes carry them out themselves. Several high-profile misconduct cases are bolstering criticisms of the current system, and momentum is building…