According to Retraction Watch, the peer review process was manipulated by networks of reviewers and editors.
The publisher and its parent company will announce tomorrow in a post on their website that they are going to issue a series of retractions. The list is still not available.
The research integrity team found several signs of manipulated peer reviews for the affected papers, including reviews that contained duplicated text, a few individuals who did a lot of reviews, and reviewers who turned in their reviews extremely quickly.
According to Richard Bennett, vice president of researcher and publishing services, the publisher suspects a coordinated peer review ring of reviewers and editors working together to advance manuscripts through to publication. He said that some of the manuscripts came from paper mills.
What prompted the investigation? Bennett spoke to us.
In April 2022, Hindawi’s Research Integrity team led an initial investigation into a single Special Issue (SI) after a Chief Editor raised concerns about some of the papers published in it. The team decided to investigate the content of the journal further. Through this investigation, the team highlighted a pattern of irregular and concerning reviewer activity and identified potential ‘bad actors’ that were present across many of these publications.
These concerns prompted the Publishing Insights and Research Integrity teams, enabled by recently enhanced analytic capabilities and newly developed dashboards providing views across all reviewer activity, to conduct a wider investigation to determine whether these same bad actors were involved in peer review manipulation elsewhere in the Hindawi portfolio.
Following the discovery that these bad actors were present in other journals, the Hindawi leadership team put in place a cross-functional working team combining the manual and data-driven investigation which resulted in the identification of further published articles.
In early August, Hindawi expanded the investigation under a combined investigation team comprising Research Integrity experts, data and analytics experts, publishing and operational teams, and legal counsel from both Wiley and Hindawi. This team evaluated in depth review activity across all potentially impacted articles and manuscripts. This resulted in a list of ‘compromised’ reviewers and editors in addition to the bad actors already discovered, identification of networks that exist between them, patterns of review activity, and insight into published articles and manuscripts at each stage in the review process that we could initially label as ‘compromised’. On September 6, the combined investigation team began assessing published articles which led to the initial recommendation to retract 511 articles that are compromised based on reviewer activity alone. We expect ongoing investigations to result in further retractions.
The review and production of submitted manuscripts were held up by the publisher and will be assessed.
Bennett wouldn't give any specifics, but he did say that it would open up new targets for those who want to exploit a system based on trust.
He said that the publisher has banned the individuals it identified, will contact research integrity officers or department heads, and has shared its findings with industry groups.
It is increasingly apparent to all involved in safeguarding and investigating issues of research integrity that closing rings down at one publisher can simply move the problem to others. We are committed to taking an active role in preventing that.
There have been a lot of retractions recently. IOP Publishing said earlier this month that it would be withdrawing nearly 500 articles from paper mills, while PLOS said in August that it would be withdrawing over 100 papers.
Liz Ferguson, senior vice president of research publishing for Wiley, said in a prepared statement that attacks on research integrity are sophisticated and appear to be coordinated.
Her statement ended.
As these attacks increase in frequency and intensity, we remain committed to upholding research integrity throughout our publishing programs. We have and will continue to share our findings with our peers and industry bodies to advance a cross-industry approach. This is absolutely essential to safeguard trust in research.
It’s something that we at Wiley are committed to and as a result we have taken the step of sharing our findings as transparently as possible, not just with our peers, but with industry associations, third party databases, and others.
These conversations have been very constructive. Our industry is one of trust – this remains our greatest asset. Only through concerted and collaborative action will we succeed together. This is our goal, and Wiley and Hindawi will continue to advance it tirelessly.
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