Recently, the 5GH team found 3 academic papers with manipulated figure(s). All these papers were co-authored by the founder(s) of the Wuhan Hudiandian Technology Co., Ltd. (武汉胡电电科技有限公司), HU Shengnan (胡胜男), and/or LI Mengying (李梦颖). Further investigation suggests the Hudiandian company or its founder(s) sold the data, which was part of HU’s and LI’s researches at Hubei University when they were postgraduate students under the supervision of Dr. WU Huimin (吴慧敏). The 5GH team would like to name this paper mill as “Hudiandian Paper Mill” (“胡电电论文工厂”).
ZHU Bin (朱斌), who earned the title of "Top 2% Scientist" in 2022, and is working for Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, and Southeast University, China, is found to receive abnormal citations via "Citation-from-Pal" and "Citation-from-Themself".
The journal is being targeted by Chinese paper mill(s)
A Chinese student claimed his supervisor asked him to review artivle in the name of the supervisor.
Recently, the 5GH Team uncovered an article [1], retracted due to potential authorship manipulation, was republished on the SAME journal, "Construction and Building Materials", with SAME title, SAME content, but 4 additional authors [2].
YAN Yuying, a professor affiliated to both the University of Nottingham, UK, and the University of Nottingham Ningbo China, earned 11 authorships in 2024, with his contribution of “Writing – review & editing”. An investigation by the 5GH team reveals.
Concerns are raised regarding the reference patterns on several publications coauthored by Nawal Abdalla Adam, who is with Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University, Saudi Arabia.
Recently, the 5GH Team notes that 51 articles on PLoS ONE, handled by a specific academic editor, ***, were retracted, mainly due to "peer review integrity and potential manipulation of the publication process" or "peer review integrity and similarities across articles", raising concerns whether the handling editor, *** got involved the manipulated publication process.
CHEN Jianmin, a professor at Fudan University and a fellow of Acadamia Europaea, is currently accused to get involved in questionable editorial practices. The investigation by the 5GH team revealed that he got involved in 44 cases of unethical practices, including 2 cases of Edit-for-Themself and 42 cases of Edit-for-Pal, all of these editorial practices were given to the articles on “Science of the Total Environment”, an Elsevier title.
Concerns are raised regarding the ethical approval in an article published on "Materials", a MDPI title.
Previously, the 5GH team and our international allies exposed some questionable editorial contributions of WANG Aijie as Editor-in-Chief on Environmental Research, an Elsevier title. As the investigation went on, we found more concerning editorial activities from Wang, a professor at Harbin Institute of Technology and CAS Research Center for Eco-Environmental Science, and she was also a winner for the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, China. Here, we update the list for her questionable editorial contributions.
Previously, we and our allies exposed some researchers in Geography gained massive publications through their editor friends, or even through their self-editing, raising concerns about the conflict of interest in those articles. Up to recently, over 1,000 articles were found with such conflict of interest, and much more are undetected due to that the information about the handling editors was not disclosed with the published articles.
However, finding a friends to handle their manuscripts was the first step to allow their articles published much easier, with less rigorous peer review. Our recent investigation suggests that some of those articles were reviewed by authors' friends (Review for Pal), too.
Nowadays, the name "Republic of China" is not widely used to refer to Taiwan in academic articles, except for the those by Taiwan authors. However, the name was found 4 times on an article with no Taiwan authors were listed.
Recently, the 5GH team and independent investigator(s) examined Santosh's papers on Geoscience Frontiers (GEOSCI FRONT), Gondwana Research (GONDWANA RES), Geosystems and Geoenvironment (GEO GEO), Geological Journal (GEOL J) from 2020 to recently, and found 65% (99/152) of the pepers wih authore-editor conflict.
A current investigation reveals that two Taylor & Francis journals, namely "Frroelectrics" and "Integrated Ferroelectrics", published massive articles which fall outside their scope.