We have received a communication from the conference organiser and conference committee of a conference proceeding published by us. They initially wrote to us advising that members of the teaching staff at their university manipulated the references of 68+ papers by deleting references/adding references which had nothing to do with the research.
The organiser advised that the university has already conducted an internal investigation and terminated the employment of two members of their staff because citation manipulation to cite one's own publications is against the university's publishing policy.
We followed up with the organiser to try to obtain answers to some key questions. They informed us that the organising committee was responsible for accepting the papers for publication and that the changes were made without the authors' consent or involvement.
We have since obtained a list from the organiser of 74 articles that they believe are impacted. In reviewing this list, we have some additional questions around the very broad scope of the conference/submitted papers. Our overall conclusion is that the peer review process for this conference was compromised.
Questions for COPE Council
1. In this situation, which of the following is most appropriate?
a. Issue corrigenda to correct the impacted articles.
b. Retract the impacted articles.
c. Retract the entire volume.
2. Before we proceed with any of the above, are there additional steps we should be taking to further investigate this case (such as posting an Expression of Concern)?
Advice on this case is from a small number of COPE Council Members. Most cases on the COPE website are presented to the COPE Forum where advice is offered by a wider group of COPE Members and COPE Council Members. Advice on individual cases is not formal COPE guidance.
An expression of concern seems like the most appropriate first step in this case while the journal investigates the peer review process further, as it will alert readers that there is a potential problem with the papers. It is not clear from the details given in what way the process was compromised, for example: was it at the hands of the organising committee or the reviewers themselves? What was the role of the fired university staff members in the conference, the proceedings, and the review process? Did the reviewers have ties to the authors, or to the university employees who were fired, or to those that manipulated the citations in the first place? Were the ‘self-citations’ references to the work of editors, staff, or organisers (in which case the papers as they were submitted may have been unaffected), or before? More broadly, where does oversight for setting the scope of the conference lie, and if existing standards weren't followed, what changes in oversight and accountability need to be made going forward?
If the journal editors can determine these answers rapidly, or if they are already satisfied on them, then an expression of concern may not be necessary and the journal can proceed straight to a retract/do not retract decision.
If the evidence suggests unethical behaviour and compromised peer review (e.g., if it seems that the peer reviewers encouraged the reference manipulation or if the journal is unable to verify that the papers went through a rigorous review process) then it may be advisable to retract the whole volume. If the journal’s investigation shows that it was only the 74 papers identified so far which are affected, then these should be retracted. Finally, if the journal finds that the conference was genuine and the papers were submitted and reviewed in good faith but that manipulation occurred after acceptance and without the authors’ knowledge, then a retraction would not be warranted. Instead, the editor should go back to the impacted authors and get the versions of the papers as accepted by the conference committee. These could then be published as corrigenda.
Any retraction statement should be very clear about the non-involvement of authors, as warranted.
The journal could also consider inviting authors to resubmit their papers or directing them to other appropriate journals in the publisher’s portfolio. In such case, the journal could advise the authors to declare the circumstances of this retraction in the cover letter for any resubmission, so that nondisclosure doesn’t have a negative impact on the subsequent review. However, the editors should also take into account the possibility of paper mill involvement when considering any proactive offers to resubmit.