A same ethical approval number of SDTHEC2024004013 was found to be shared by three articles [1, 2, 3] from Shandong Cancer Hospital and Institute, an investigation by the 5GH Team reveals.
A same ethical approval number (XMYY-2024KYSB090) in three articles [1, 2, 3] coauthored by YE Guanzhi (叶冠志) et. al., with The First Affiliated Hospital of Xiamen University. However, This ethical approval is questionable.
Five articles [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] coauthored by ZHAO Mei (赵媚) with the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, share the same ethical approval, which was granted on Nov.10th, 2023 with the grant number of H23128. However, this ethical approval is questionable.
The article [1] reports the prevalence of cleft lip and palate (CLP) in Hubei province of China, during 2015 and 2022. However, comparing to the numbers reported in other articles, the prevalence of 0.44‰ reported in article [1] seems to be abnormal.
Abnormal citation patterns are observed on the article [1]
The ethical approval statements on two articles [1, 2] published by the same author group at Wuhan University are found to be problematic.
Problematic ethics statements are found in multiple articles on "Chinese Medicine", a Springer Nature title. Here are some examples
In 2025, 55 journals were editorially delisted by WOS, however, on February 1st, 2026, 18 of them still claim to be indexed in the database.
Currently, we have analyzed 29 Review articles published on "Journal of Controlled Release" in 2025 and 2026, under Open Access model, and found 14 (48%) of them have at least one problematic reference, which was flagged regarding their data/image integrity.
Recently, the 5GH Team uncovered a network at Hainan University and other Chinese universities suspected of manipulating the peer review process.
Following a lead, we have identified 46 articles, whose corresponding authors listed email addresses under this domain
Recently, the 5GH Team has identified about 1,713 potential irrelevant citation vehicles, articles massively citing irrelevant references.
A recent investigation by the 5GH Team uncovered the questionable editorial and review practices by HUANG Difang (黄棣芳) on PLoS ONE and other journals.
Recently, the 5GH Team received a tip-off alleging that Timothy Jeonglyeol LEE (李鼎烈) from the Macau University of Science and Technology may be exploiting his position as the Editor-in-Chief of "The International Journal of Tourism Research" (IJTR) to inflate his citations. Here are some more detailed data
A previous investigation [1] revealed that about 17.5% citations to DAI Shifeng (代世峰) in 2025 came from the "International Journal of Coal Geology" (IJCG), the journal for which he services as the Editor-in-Chief. However, our further investigation shows that the phenomenon was common over the last two decades.