Issue #96
by Michael Seadle (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
On 3 December 2024, Martin Enserink wrote in Science about how “... ecotoxicologist Michael Bertram …” learned that his name was used for “... dozens of fake peer reviews on papers submitted to the journal Science of the Total Environment (STOTEN)”.¹ Elsevier, as the publisher for STOTEN, has retracted 22 papers, and more retractions are likely. The retraction notices all say: “‘The Editors-in-Chief have lost confidence in the validity/integrity of the article and its findings and have determined that it should be retracted.’”¹
How this could have happened is increasingly clear: “Many journals invite authors to submit names of possible reviewers along with their manuscript. Authors can abuse this system by suggesting real scientists with relevant expertise but supplying fake email addresses they have created or have access to. If the journal editors accept the suggestions without vetting the email, authors can write and submit favorable reviews of their own paper, increasing the chances of publication.”¹
Part of the problem appears to come from a corresponding author and co-author from Brazil who “... denied having written the reviews.”¹ He argues that “... hackers might have had access to his professional and personal data …”¹ The editor handling the review process should have checked the email addresses of the reviewers, though whether that would have uncovered the extent of the deception is also unclear. “The faked reviews have not been made public, but they have likely been read by at least one or two other reviewers, a handling editor, and a senior editor.”¹ This appears to be another case where the overburdened peer-review system fails to detect fraud. Perhaps that is unsurprising, since peer review was never meant to be a fraud detection system per se, but a means of measuring the quality of an article.
Allowing authors to suggest reviewers for their own articles may make sense in specialized fields where the community of scholars with the necessary expertise is small, and it certainly relieves an overworked editor from the burden of finding appropriate reviewers, but it seems also to open a fraud risk that both undermines quality and ultimately adds to the editorial workload once the fraud is discovered.
1: Enserink, Martin. 2024. “‘It Felt Very Icky’: This Scientist’s Name Was Used to Write Fake Peer Reviews.” December 3, 2024. https://www.science.org/content/article/it-felt-very-icky-scientist-s-name-was-used-write-fake-peer-reviews.
Comments