Most fake peer reviews linked to articles written in China-based institutes
A major international publisher of scientific and business academic papers has retracted 64 articles for fabricating peer reviews after another 43 articles were retracted in March, most writers of which were from China, media reported Wednesday.
Springer announced the retractions on Tuesday after internal investigations revealed the manipulation of peer reviews, which can occur when researchers "supply contact details for them that actually route requests for review back to the researchers themselves," Nature magazine reported.
Springer did not identify the articles or journals involved, while a search on its website showed over 40 retraction notices dated between Monday and Wednesday for articles in eight journals of Springer. Most of the writers are from China, including researchers at scientific institutes in Beijing and Shanghai, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
Fabricated identities were assigned to fake email addresses and real identities were stolen for bogus reviews, William Curtis, executive vice-president for publishing, medicine and biomedicine at Springer, was quoted as saying by Nature.
"Peer reviews are not required for journal publication in China but are widely applied to research project evaluation and professional title conferment. Peer reviewers are required to anonymously evaluate papers before researchers get funding, but their identities are often compromised and will be contacted for a better evaluation report," Zhi Zhenfeng, an associate research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.
Some identities are revealed by providers of those funds for personal interests, Zhi said.
Curtis told Xinhua that most retracted articles were submitted in 2014 and they consisted of less than 0.05 percent of the total articles submitted from China.
He added that he believes the articles do not represent the Chinese research community, some of whose articles are noteworthy.
Similar fake peer reviews led to the retraction of 43 articles from the London-based BioMed Central in March. Data from Retraction Watch, a blog that reports on retractions of scientific papers, shows that articles retracted due to fabricated peer reviews represent 15 percent of the total number of retractions in the past three years.
According to Zhi, manipulating peer reviews may be a result of China's nepotist society, but this runs against the values of the academe.
Virginia Barbour, chair of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), added that some third-party companies may have been involved in the fabrications, while some Chinese researchers tend to resort to such companies when submitting articles, Xinhua reported.
