Abnormal Reference Patterns on the Publications by NA Adam
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.
During a recent investigation, the 5GH Team uncovered 7 articles (highlighted with yellow), which were coauthored by Nawal Abdalla Adam, having high proportion (over 25%) of the references to Muhammad Umair, with Ghazi University, Pakistan.
Additionally, Alexander Magazinov previously posted on PubPeer that 4 articles (highlighted with blue) from NA Adam also served as the citation vehicles to M Umair, resulting in 11 articles with abnormal reference patterns.
Most of these 11 articles also have abnormal authorship patterns: (1) the first authors of them are usually affiliated to Chinese universities, (2) the authors of each articles are usually from multiple nations, including but not limited to China, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, (3) there is no overlap of any Chinese author among different articles, suggesting the cooperation was likely faked.
We also noted that M Umair was listed as coauthors on 2 of these 11 article [1-2], it remains unknown if there is a paper mill network between M Umair and NA Adam.
Reference
[1] 10.1016/j.ijhydene.2025.03.090
[2] 10.1002/mde.4509
