Four papers retracted for fake peer review
False email addresses were supplied
On November 17, four papers published by
researchers from Thiruvananthapuram-based national labs were retracted by
journal publisher Frontiers owing to fake peer reviews. Three papers are from
CSIR-National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology (NIIST)
and the fourth is from ICAR-Central Tuber Research Institute (CTCRI). The
papers were published between August 2015 and October 2017 in three journals.
Review of manuscripts by researchers working
in the same area of specialisation allows for critical evaluation of the
manuscript prior to publication in journals. Some journal publishers ask
authors to suggest reviewers for their papers.
There have been many instances where the
suggested reviewers may be real persons but the email addresses are fakes. So
the manuscript comes back to the author or the author’s friends who give the
paper a glowing review.
The authors of the four papers had shared
personal or non-institutional email addresses of the supposed peer reviewers to
manipulate the system.
Common author
S. Nishanth Kumar, who was a post-doc at
NIIST, is the only author common to all four papers; he is the first author of
three papers and a corresponding author of two papers. Dr. B.S. Dileep Kumar,
who heads the Agroprocessing and Natural Products Division at NIIST, is a
corresponding author of three papers.
According to Retraction Watch blog, routine
check on another manuscript submitted by Nishanth Kumar and other authors led
to the discovery of faked emails. The manuscript was rejected and further
scrutiny led to the discovery of fake emails supplied for the four papers that
have now been retracted.
“Nishanth Kumar had done his doctorate from
ICAR-Central Tuber Research Institute (CTCRI), Thiruvananthapuram, and joined
NIIST as a post-doc. He was not a permanent scientist at NIIST. He was doing
reasonably good work and the papers are of reasonable quality. I don’t know why
he did this. Now, we have not been able to trace him,” says Dr. Ajay Ghosh,
Director of NIIST.
Worked independently
“He was a Science & Engineering Research
Board (SERB) fellow and working as a temporary employee but equivalent to a
scientist. He was working independently. He had contacts with many researchers
and he suggested the names of reviewers,” says Dr. Dileep Kumar of NIIST who
was monitoring the group’s work.
“I made a mistake by not suggesting the names
of reviewers. But till this happened, we never doubted him... In the paper
published in May this year, he has given CTCRI as his affiliation though he is
not associated with the institute. The co-author of that paper Dr. C. Mohandas
of CTCRI retired four years ago. One of the reviewers for a paper is his PhD
co-guide who retired from CTCRI nearly five years ago.
“I have been working as a CSIR scientists for
last 26 years and have only four years to retire. This has come as a black mark
at the fag end of my career. The work carried out by eight students who worked
for two years has gone to waste.”
Regards
Pralhad Jadhav
Senior Manager @ Knowledge
Repository
Khaitan & Co
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