Tumor Biology published papers in 2015 and 2016 that were not legitimately peer reviewed.
The cancer journal has been forced to retract 107 recent papers, the largest such action by any journal following an investigation by international science publisher Springer. This is a record-breaking retraction after fake peer reviews.
Instead of being scrutinised by independent researchers, the papers were sent to fake email addresses and given favourable appraisals, most likely supplied by the authors themselves or associates of the authors.
“We are retracting these published papers because the peer-review process required for publication in our journals had been deliberately compromised by fabricated peer reviewer report,” Springer said.
The journal, which ranked 104th out of 213 oncology journals, was hit by an earlier scandal last year when 25 papers were retracted due to compromised reviews and other issues.
“Based on this extra screening, new names of fake reviewers were detected … The extent of the current retractions was not obvious from the earlier investigations in 2015.”
Publisher Springer dumped Tumor Biology at the end of last year. The title is now being published by SAGE.
Springer withdrew 64 papers from 10 journals in 2015. This latest kerfuffle brings the publisher’s total retractions for fake reviews to around 450.
This fraud upon cancer research is extraordinary.
…Fake doctors, fake nurses, fake science, now fake papers.
