Frontiers to retract 122 articles, links thousands in other publishers’ journals to “unethical” network – Retraction Watch

The publisher Frontiers has begun retracting a batch of 122 articles across five journals after an investigation found a network of authors and editors engaged in “unethical actions” such as manipulating citations and reviewing papers without disclosing conflicts of interest. 

The publisher’s research integrity team has identified more than 4,000 articles linked to the network in journals owned by seven other companies, according to a company statement. The team said it is willing to share details and the methodology of their investigation with other publishers upon request. The company is a member of the STM Hub, a platform publishers use to share such information. 

As the publishing industry comes to grips with its paper mill problem, many firms have issued retractions in bulk. Frontiers retracted a batch of 40 in 2023, and a dozen the year before.  

The latest tranche of retractions began to appear July 28. By our count, at least 25 were posted that day. According to one of the notices, which are identical for each paper, the publisher’s investigation “identified this article as one for which the integrity of the peer review process has been undermined, resulting in the loss of confidence in the article’s findings.” 

The investigation “was not able to determine whether all authors, editors, or reviewers were aware of or involved in the misconduct, but this misconduct was significant enough to determine that the scientific integrity of the article cannot be guaranteed,” the notices state. 

A list of the forthcoming retractions Frontiers provided us names one paper from Frontiers in Ecology in Evolution, six from Frontiers in Public Health, 29 from Frontiers in Energy Research, 33 from Frontiers in Environmental Science, and 53 from Frontiers in Psychology. Most were published in 2022. 

The investigation began after a reader noted undisclosed conflicts of interest in the peer review of a single paper, according to the statement. PubPeer user “Desmococcus antarctica” has posted comments on some of the papers to be retracted, identifying instances in which an author and reviewer had previously coauthored a paper together. 

After the first tip, the research integrity team began investigating all the authors’ previous submissions, publications, and coauthor networks, the publisher’s statement said. 

“As the investigation proceeded, it became clear that a broad and sophisticated network of about 35 authors were potentially colluding over a very large number of journals and published papers, a fraction of which were published by Frontiers,” according to the statement. 

Frontiers has an artificial intelligence review system for submitted manuscripts, which now includes verification of the reviewers’ and handling editors’ conflict of interest statements, the company said. 

One of Desmococcus antarctica’s comments on PubPeer pertains to “Households’ Perception and Environmentally Friendly Technology Adoption: Implications for Energy Efficiency,” published in 2022 in Frontiers in Energy Research. The user pointed out that reviewer Muhammad Mohsin, an associate professor in the school of finance and economics at Jiangsu University in China, had previously coauthored a paper with one of the authors. 

Mohsin also served as an editor for the collection in which the paper appeared. Many papers from the collection, which Frontiers calls a “Research Topic,” have been retracted, and Mohsin is listed as the handling editor on several. He did not immediately respond to our request for comment. 

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