FLICKR, JOE THE GOAT FARMERPublishing giant Elsevier recently pulled nine papers from five of its journals after confirming manipulated peer reviews, Retraction Watch reported this week (October 13).
“After a thorough investigation, the Publisher has concluded that the acceptance of this article was based upon the positive advice of at least one faked reviewer report. The report was submitted from a fictitious email account which was provided to the journal as a suggested reviewer by the first author during the submission of the paper,” according to a notice posted on a retracted Brazilian Journal of Infectious Diseases article.
Three years ago, Elsevier reported a similar issue: submitting authors who—by using phony email addresses—suggested themselves as reviewers.
Peer-review manipulation has impacted other publishers in 2015. Springer retracted 64 papers from 10 of its journals in August because of faked reviews, while BioMed Central pulled 43 papers from more than...
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