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   From: alt.fan.jai-maharaj@googlegroups.com   
      
   Leading science publisher retracts dozens of papers for   
   fake peer reviews   
      
   By Jazz Shaw   
   hotair.com   
   Wednesday, August 19, 2015   
      
   Springer Publishing, one of the world's leading   
   publishers of Science, Technology and Medicine (STM)   
   books and journals, issued an announcement this week that   
   64 different professional articles, primarily in the   
   medical field, had been retracted. It turns out that the   
   vaunted peer review process, designed to ensure that   
   multiple sets of experts evaluate the quality of the work   
   before it hits the presses, had fallen apart. The peer   
   reviews in some cases were found to be "highly   
   suspicious" with bogus email addresses and questionable   
   credentials.   
      
        Springer confirms that 64 articles are being   
   retracted from 10 Springer subscription journals, after   
   editorial checks spotted fake email addresses, and   
   subsequent internal investigations uncovered fabricated   
   peer review reports. After a thorough investigation we   
   have strong reason to believe that the peer review   
   process on these 64 articles was compromised. We reported   
   this to the Committee on Publishing Ethics (COPE)   
   immediately. Attempts to manipulate peer review have   
   affected journals across a number of publishers as   
   detailed by COPE in their December 2014 statement.   
   Springer has made COPE aware of the findings of its own   
   internal investigations and has followed COPE's   
   recommendations, as outlined in their statement, for   
   dealing with this issue. Springer will continue to   
   participate and do whatever we can to support COPE's   
   efforts in this matter.   
      
   Retraction Watch (yes, that's a real thing, apparently)   
   has been covering related stories for some time now and   
   reports that Springer is also the owner of BioMed Central   
   Journals which retracted 43 papers earlier this year,   
   also for fake peer reviews. That brings the total number   
   for this one company to more than a hundred in a single   
   year. Going further, Retraction Watch reports that there   
   have been roughly 1,500 papers retracted across various   
   science journals since 2012, with approximately 15% of   
   them being for faked peer reviews.   
      
   Continues at:   
      
   http://hotair.com/archives/2015/08/19/leading-science-publisher-   
   etracts-dozens-of-papers-for-fake-peer-reviews/   
      
   Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi   
   Om Shanti   
      
   http://groups.google.com/group/alt.fan.jai-maharaj   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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