In May, behavioral ecologist and ecotoxicologist Michael Bertram received some disconcerting news: His identity had been used, apparently by another researcher, to produce dozens of fake peer reviews on papers submitted to the journal Science of the Total Environment (STOTEN). Elsevier, the journal’s publisher, had opened an investigation, says Bertram, who works at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.
Now, this scandal has burst into the open. Since 22 November, Elsevier has retracted 22 papers in STOTEN, a number that’s set to grow. The retraction notices, which are nearly identical, all say Elsevier’s Research Integrity & Publishing Ethics team determined that one or more of the reviews for each paper were “fictitious,” written under the name of known scientists without their knowledge. “Although the paper was reviewed by additional reviewers chosen by the Editor, this breach compromised the editorial process,” the notices 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.”
Fake peer reviews have become an increasingly familiar type of academic fraud. 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.
All 22 of the STOTEN retraction notices say the reviewers’ names and fictitious contact details had been submitted by ecotoxicologist Guilherme Malafaia of the Goiano Federal Institute in Brazil, who was a corresponding author on 21 of the papers and a co-author on one. The statements do not explicitly say Malafaia wrote the reviews. An Elsevier spokesperson declined to answer specific questions on the matter.
Malafaia sent Science a 28-page “Open letter to the scientific community,” also posted on his lab website today, in which he denied having written the reviews. “It is inconceivable to think that any achievements I have attained … were built based on falsifying emails or issuing inauthentic opinions,” he says. The letter does not explain where Malafaia had found the email addresses that he submitted for potential reviewers—although it says he did tell Elsevier—or who could have written the reviews, and why.
He said hackers might have had access to his professional and personal data, although it was not clear who. “I have considered many possibilities, and these questions haunt me: Could someone be deliberately attempting to harm my reputation and sabotage my scientific career?” Malafaia wrote in an email to Elsevier quoted in the open letter. “Could this be an attempt to destabilize the editorial system itself by exploiting vulnerabilities to undermine the peer review process?”
His open letter criticizes the publisher’s editorial processes as well as the investigation, and calls the retractions “unfair and disproportionate.” The correspondence with Elsevier suggests the publisher will eventually retract 47 of the more than 70 papers Malafaia published in the journal.
STOTEN has published more than 7000 research articles in each of the past 3 years and has a respectable impact factor of 8.2. But the analytics firm Clarivate recently put the journal “on hold,” meaning its papers are no longer indexed in the influential Web of Science bibliometric database, because of concerns about the quality of STOTEN’s papers. A note on Clarivate’s website says, “The journal is being re-evaluated according to our selection criteria.”
Science talked to Bertram, one of the scientists whose names were used on reviews of Malafaia’s papers, about his experience. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
