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An academic journal has retracted dozens of articles and apologised to readers after falling victim to what it described as a “peer review ring” that appears to have involved more than 100 bogus scholars.
The Journal of Vibration and Control (JVC), a leading publication in the field of acoustics, said it was withdrawing 60 papers published in print and online over the past four years, after discovering that articles were being approved and cited by academics with “assumed and fabricated identities”.
The journal’s publisher, Sage, said in a statement that the ring appeared to centre around Peter Chen, a researcher formerly of National Pingtung University of Education, in Taiwan. Chen provided an “unsatisfactory response” when confronted, and has since resigned from his post. Chen could not be reached for comment on Thursday.
“We regret that individual authors have compromised the academic record by perverting the peer review process and apologise to readers,” the publisher said in a statement. “On uncovering problems with peer review and citation Sage immediately put steps in place to avoid similar vulnerability of the Journal to exploitation in the future.”
Ali Nayfeh, the journal’s editor-in-chief since its establishment in 1995 and a professor emeritus in the college of engineering at Virginia Tech, resigned in May following the findings, the publisher said. Nayfeh did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
Sage said that a “complex investigation” was carried out after evidence emerged last year that the online submission system used for papers published in the journal was being manipulated.
“While investigating the JVC papers submitted and reviewed by Peter Chen, it was discovered that the author had created various aliases on Sage Track, providing different email addresses to set up more than one account,” the statement said.
“Consequently, Sage scrutinised further the co-authors of and reviewers selected for Peter Chen’s papers, these names appeared to form part of a peer review ring. The investigation also revealed that on at least one occasion, the author Peter Chen reviewed his own paper under one of the aliases he had created.”
The 60 articles were eventually retracted because “evidence points towards them having at least one author or being reviewed by at least one reviewer who has been implicated” in the fraudulent ring, according to the publisher.
The mass withdrawal of papers by the journal was first reported by Retraction Watch, a blog monitoring academic publications. Sage said in a statement to the blog that while it did not have a “definitive number of individual scientists involved in this ring”, it had contacted 130 email accounts, “a large number of which” were believed to be bogus accounts or aliases.
Sage said that three senior editors and 27 additional associate editors, all “with expertise and prestige in the field” had been appointed to run the peer review process for the journal following the inquiry findings and Nayfeh’s departure.
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