Category: Academic Publishing

Academic Publishing News Research integrity

Catherine Jessus case: journals hide behind Sorbonne & COPE to avoid retractions

Jaw-dropping corrections issued for the French martyr saint of research integrity, Catherine Jessus, head of biology branch at the French CNRS. All these works of science contained such appalling Photoshop manipulations that the academic publisher had to bend over backwards and hide behind COPE guidelines to invent a reason against retractions.

Academic Publishing Smut Clyde

Tarantino & Finelli: i plagiatori di Napoli

Giovanni Tarantino andC armine Finelli are two medical plagiarists from Naples in Italy, who became infamous after one of them was caught having stolen the work of a US colleague he was peer reviewing. In other cases, the two Napolitans were even too lazy to plagiarise. They simply republished their already plagiarised “works” several times, even as book chapters. The journals were informed, but most couldn’t care less.

Academic Publishing Medicine Research integrity

Karolinska gets taught German medical ethics

In the aftermath of the scandal around Paolo Macchiarini, which left many patients dead, his former employer Karolinska Institutet requested a retraction a paper. The Swiss-German medical publisher Karger and its journal Respiration however categorically refused and ordered KI not “to patronize the readers of the journal ‘Respiration’.” The German Editor-in-Chief had namely a huge conflict of interest.

Academic Publishing Guest post

Editor sacked over rejection rate: “not inline with Frontiers core principles”

Frontiers describes itself as “a community-rooted, open-access academic publisher”, and boasts a ~71,000 head strong “virtual editorial office”. This guest post by Regina-Michaela Wittich, a former senior editor of a Frontiers journal, narrates how she was sacked by Frontiers because she rejected too many papers for being of insufficient scientific quality, instead of sending them into the “rigorous” Frontiers peer review process

Academic Publishing Research integrity Scamferences

How scam artist Ashutosh Tiwari played Linköping University

“I fully support Dr Ashutosh Tiwari being permitted to enter the Docent programme of Linköping University. [.. }He is carrying out first-rate research, supervising students, has organised a number of international events on behalf of Linköping University, has an excellent publication record and has recently designed a PhD course for us. […]
Yours sincerely,
Professor Anthony P F Turner PhD, DSc, FRSC”