Publisher Elsevier recently announced the withdrawal of 3 articles by a group of Vietnamese authors from Fuel Magazine for 3 reasons that the authors said were not convincing. What do scientists say about this situation?
Publisher Elsevier gives reason for article withdrawal on Fuel website
On October 19, Elsevier Publishing House announced the retraction of three articles by a group of Vietnamese authors, citing the following reasons: "The above articles had changes in authorship during the revision process. These changes were made without verification or authorization. This violated the journal's copyright policy. In addition, the review process of the article was conducted by editors who had a record of collaboration, including co-publishing with some authors in the article. The corresponding authors (and other authors) responded promptly to requests for clarification on these points, but those explanations did not adequately address the concerns. Therefore, and given the nature of the irregularities discovered, the editors have lost confidence in the validity/integrity and findings of the article and have decided to retract the article."
Three scientific articles published in 2022 have just been withdrawn from the Fuel Journal by Elsevier Publishing House, including: " Combustion and emission behaviors of dual-fuel premixed charge compression ignition engine powered with n-pentanol and blend of diesel/waste tire oil included nanoparticles " (authors include PV Elumalai, Satosh Kumar Dash, M.Parthasarathy, NR Dhineshbabu, Dhinesh Balasubramanian, Dao Nam Cao, Thanh Hai Truong, Anh Tuan Le, Anh Tuan Hoang).
" Exploration over combined impacts of modified piston bowl geometry and tert-butyl hydroquinone additive-included biodiesel/diesel blend on diesel engine behaviors " (author group includes Krupakaran Radhakrishnan Lawrence, Zuohua Huang, Xuan Phuong Nguyen, Dhinesh Balasubramanian, Vidyasagar Reddy Gangula, Raghurami Reddy Dodipalli, Van Vang Le, Sachuthananthan Bharathy, Anh Tuan Hoang).
" Optimization of variable compression ratio diesel engine fueled with Zinc oxide nanoparticles and biodiesel emulsion using response surface methodology " (author group R. Hussain Vali, Anh Tuan Hoang, Harveer Singh Pali, Dhinesh Balasubramanian, Muslum Arici, Zafar Said, Xuan Phuong Nguyen).
Request clarification on 3 issues
Speaking to Thanh Nien Newspaper reporter, Associate Professor Dr. Hoang Anh Tuan, representative of scientists whose 3 articles were recently withdrawn from Fuel Magazine by Elsevier Publishing House, said that the incident started on May 17, 2024, when Mr. Tuan and the group of authors received an email from Elsevier's Ethics Committee requesting clarification on a number of issues related to the above articles.
In the letter, the Ethics Committee asked the group of authors, including Mr. Tuan, to clarify three issues: Why did the group of authors change the author's name during the revision rounds? What is the relationship between the authors? Is there any relationship between Mr. Tuan and Professor Zuohua Huang (Editor-in-Chief in charge of the Asia-Pacific region, co-author of the second retracted article)?
Mr. Tuan said the group wrote a letter to respond to the Elsevier Ethics Committee, the manager of the Energy - Fuel Journal group (Ms. Kathleen), and the Editor-in-Chief of Fuel magazine - Mr. Bill Nimmo.
Regarding the first issue, Mr. Tuan affirmed that at the time the group of authors submitted their articles, Elsevier did not have a regulation that when withdrawing or adding authors to an article during the revision process, the journal management must be notified.
"We submit our articles to the journal's system. This system can identify any changes in author names, such as which authors have been withdrawn, which authors have been newly added. If this policy had been in place at that time, when the system reported a change in author names, the journal would have immediately asked us to explain and could not have ignored it and accepted the article for publication," said Mr. Tuan.
According to Mr. Tuan, during the repair process, the group asked for contributions from authors with similar expertise, so they agreed to add the names of those authors. In addition, some authors could not continue to contribute to the project, so they requested to withdraw their names from the project.
"Changing or adding authors based on their contributions to a scientific work, agreed by the authors and without conflicts, is completely in line with ethical standards. The added authors mainly come from universities in Vietnam. The foreign authors of the article are all members of our research groups, we have participated in many scientific publications together before, they are not ghost authors," said Mr. Tuan.
Regarding the second accusation, Mr. Tuan confirmed to Elsevier Publishing House that a number of Indian and Chinese co-authors were in Mr. Tuan's research group and had participated in the project together since 2020, along with documents with red stamps from the units Mr. Tuan had worked for at that time about inviting the above authors to collaborate on research. At the same time, Mr. Tuan sent a photo proving that the group of authors sent members to India to conduct experiments.
Regarding the third accusation, Mr. Tuan explained: "All review and assignment processes are assigned by the Editor-in-Chief of Fuel Magazine. We cannot interfere with the Editor-in-Chief's assignment and decision-making process. Furthermore, my article with Professor Zuohua Huang was managed by another editor (at that time, co-Editor-in-Chief William Nimmo sent us the decision to revise the article), not Professor Zuohua Huang," Mr. Tuan informed.
According to Mr. Tuan, Fuel Magazine's regulations require authors to propose 3-5 reviewers right on the system to complete the submission process. Therefore, Mr. Tuan's group has also proposed reviewers according to this mandatory regulation.
"The reviewer may or may not know the author, but Fuel 's submission system does not have a section to declare the relationship between the author and the proposed person. The selection of reviewers is the right of the editor in charge, however, it is very rare for the editor to choose a reviewer proposed on the system," said Mr. Tuan.
A response from Associate Professor, Dr. Hoang Anh Tuan and the group of authors to Elsevier Publishing House
Letter dated September 27 from Elsevier Publishing House
Is changing the author name a policy violation?
In September, Elsevier continued to email the group of authors and reiterated two accusations: Changing the author's name is a violation of Elsevier's policy and Mr. Tuan and some authors in the group have relationships with the editor in charge of the review and peer review process. Regarding the suspicion that the group of authors have no connection, this publisher no longer mentioned it. At the same time, this publisher affirmed in the email that the policy on changing the author's name has been in place since December 2021.
Mr. Tuan still affirmed to Thanh Nien Newspaper reporter: "There was no such policy at the time we submitted the article. Especially, I was the Editor-in-Chief of this magazine from December 2022 to March 2023, but I did not see this policy. In early 2023, Elsevier started updating the website and they changed the policy more clearly."
In the end, Elsevier Publishing House did not accept the authors' explanations and decided to withdraw the article. Mr. Tuan said the authors were very upset with this decision.
"We do not violate scientific integrity such as buying and selling articles, buying and selling data, falsifying data or plagiarism. The articles on experiments on internal combustion engines are of very high quality and we have no conflicts of interest. The fact that I changed the authors' names based on their contributions to the article is that we are complying with scientific integrity when the authors acknowledge their contributions to the work and this has been sent by all authors to Elsevier Publishing House," said Mr. Tuan.
What do scientists say about changing article authors?
Dr. Duong Tu (working at Purdue University, USA) said that Elsevier is a commercial publisher, besides publishing articles with certain quality criteria, their important goal is to make money. "However, publishers still have to balance between quality and commerce. They only withdraw articles in cases of force majeure because this can lead to litigation and negatively affect the reputation of the journal as well as the publisher, causing potential authors to hesitate to submit manuscripts and thus the publisher's revenue to decrease. Fuel is not a predatory journal, and the peer review process must ensure Elsevier's standards," Dr. Tu commented.
Normally, when adding, removing or changing the order of authors during the review process, journals always require the author group to notify the journal to ensure transparency as well as to limit author fraud and article trading.
Not all publishers have an automatic system to detect changes in the author list during the peer review process, so they often require the authors of the article to proactively notify them. If the publisher detects a change in the author list before the article is published, they will ask the group of authors to explain the collaborative relationship during the writing process, the contributions of each author, whether the appearance of the new author is agreed upon by the entire group of authors or not... If the group of authors explains satisfactorily, they will accept it; otherwise, the article will be rejected.
In case after posting the article, the publisher discovers a change in the author list, they will also ask for an explanation, if not convincing they will withdraw the article.
Regarding the editor-in-chief being a co-author, this is not an integrity violation if the editor-in-chief does not participate in the peer review process, ensuring that there is no conflict of interest.
Many journals allow authors to suggest reviewers. If the author has a relationship with a reviewer, he or she must proactively declare any conflict of interest. The decision of who to review is entirely up to the editor.
In this case, Elsevier decided to withdraw the article because it believed that the authors' explanation was not satisfactory due to concerns about changes in the author list and conflicts of interest.
Professor Nguyen Van Tuan (University of Technology Sydney, Australia) said that if the author informs Fuel magazine about the change of author that they accept for publication, the responsibility belongs to the magazine.
"If the author did not notify, but they published, then I think the author is responsible (for violating the policy). It seems that the editorial board did not realize the change in authors, because they wrote that they only knew after investigation," Dr. Tuan acknowledged.
A professor from the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology said that there was nothing unusual about the editor-in-chief co-authoring the article with the group of authors. What was important was that the group of authors could prove that the person who assigned the article and was in charge of the review process was not the editor-in-chief and that the reviewers were also selected by another editor. Changing the author's name was also normal. What was important was that there was consensus among the authors.
Source: https://thanhnien.vn/bi-rut-bai-bao-khoa-hoc-tren-tap-chi-quoc-te-tac-gia-noi-gi-185241020222935437.htm
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