By Josh Fischman
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Originally published September 30, 2012
Scientists appear to have figured out a new way to avoid any bad prepublication reviews that dissuade journals from publishing their articles: Write positive reviews themselves, under other people's names.
In incidents involving four scientists—the latest case coming to light two weeks ago—journal editors say authors got to critique their own papers by suggesting reviewers with contact e-mails that actually went to themselves.
The glowing endorsements got the work into Experimental Parasitology, Pharmaceutical Biology, and several other journals. Fake reviews even got a pair of mathematics articles into journals published by Elsevier, the academic publishing giant, which has a system in place intended to thwart such misconduct. The frauds have produced retractions of about 30 papers to date.
"I find it very shocking," said Laura Schmidt, publisher in charge of mathematics journals at Elsevier. "It's very serious, very manipulative, and very deliberate."
The entire story is here.
