Science Journal Pulls 60 Papers in Peer-Review Fraud

[n2doc]

A scientific journal has retracted 60 papers linked to a researcher in Taiwan, accusing him of “perverting the peer-review process” by creating fraudulent online accounts to judge the papers favorably and help get them published.

Sage Publications, publisher of The Journal of Vibration and Control, in which the papers appeared over the last four years, said the researcher, Chen-Yuan Chen, had established a “peer-review and citation ring” consisting of fake scientists as well as real ones whose identities he had assumed. It said that in at least one case, Mr. Chen, who also uses the first name Peter, reviewed his own paper using one of the aliases.

In all, Mr. Chen, an associate professor of computer science who resigned in February from the National Pingtung University of Education amid an investigation, appears to have created 130 email accounts that were used in reviewing the papers. A spokeswoman for the publisher said it had contacted all the accounts but received no replies.

Sage said that the retracted papers all had at least one author or reviewer implicated in the ring, and that it was possible that other scientists were involved in the activity.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/11/science/science-journal-pulls-60-papers-in-peer-review-fraud.html?_r=0

[eppur_se_muova]

1. So there's a third option -- publish, perish, or game the system. nt

[riqster]

4. Old joke: Socrates wrote nothing, and Plato wrote a lot.

Plato lived and Socrates was killed. Thus began the custom "publish or perish".

[sharp_stick]

2. Oh man, I thought it was the Journal "Science"

that would have been something else.

I don't know this field or the journal but I have to wonder how you could fake a bunch of identities and use them for "review". They must not do anything at all to ensure affiliations or academic history before assigning reviews.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

3. Yeah, I'm rather shocked that they don't require

'peer reviewers' to have actual affiliations with real universities. If he's simply been doing a sort of 'man in the middle' attack where he got them to send mail meant for real scientists to him instead, pretending to be them, that would be one thing. To find out he was able to also simply 'make up' scientists to be 'peer reviewers' is pretty shocking.

I would guess their 'impact factor' will be taking a hit after this as well.

[longship]

5. Well, there's one journal which has lost all credibility.

There are many more.