The leading magazine pulls the papers because of peer review problems

The leading robotics magazine has had to withdraw six articles from Chinese researchers after they came to the conclusion that critics worked with the authors to “undo” the peer review process.

The movement is likely to highlight the efforts of Chinese researchers to publish a fake peer review International Journal of Advanced Robotics Systems stated that it had pulled several journals from 2020 and stated that it believed that “the peer review process for these articles had been jeopardized”.

Salvia’s title said it had “reason to believe that this was due to the author’s misconduct” and “as a result, the scientific accuracy of these articles is unreliable.”

All the papers were about the possible use of human robots in sports, from table tennis and basketball to badminton and football – an area where issues of stability and balance have taxed some of the world’s best robotics engineers. Most of the canceled articles have been written by scholars from Chinese sports schools, many of whom had not previously published a peer-reviewed paper.

When asked about cancellations, an open magazine spokesman who charges $ 1,500 for publication if the papers are accepted said Times Higher Education that its internal monitoring systems had identified patterns in several documents, “which show that the authors manipulated the peer review process – in particular that they worked with evaluators in an attempt to overturn the proper peer review process.”

The magazine added that repeated attempts to contact the authors by email or phone had failed. Times Higher Education also could not contact similar factors.

“Ensuring the integrity of an academic record is an ongoing dynamic process. Sage is constantly reviewing its policies and procedures to prevent peer review from being manipulated in the face of new forms, ”the publisher added, saying it has added additional checks on the authors’ possible relationships with reviewers after cancellations.

“In most cases, action is taken before publication, but sometimes – as in this case – it is necessary to take corrective action afterwards,” the newspaper said.

The episode is likely to focus on peer-to-peer hacking, which in some cases has allowed forged research produced by so-called paper mills to gain access to prestigious journals. Since January 2020, more than 1,000 papers have likely been identified from paper mills, of which only about 40 percent had been withdrawn. Nature announced earlier this year.

China has long been considered a hot target of this type of fraud, given the generous financial incentives given to those who publish in leading Western newspapers. Most of the cancellations caused by falsified peer reviews have been linked to China, which is now the world’s most productive scientific publisher, averaging about 305,000 articles a year.

Anna Albakina, a sociologist at the Free University of Berlin who has studied fraud in academic publishing, said the latest episode on a single magazine suggested “brokerage firms or even paper mill production.” Under this arrangement, researchers or their educational institutions pay not only for the writing of ghostwrites but also for a list of “comfortable” peer reviewers who may also receive a fee for collaboration.

Brokerage firms, which he had also found in Russia, “assist in sending papers, offer duplicate writing for sale, and intervene in the peer review process by searching for and contacting potential peer reviewers,” he explained.