Webinar: “Retractions Are on the Rise….But Not Enough”

The number of retractions has increased significantly in recent years. Fraudulent research impacts all researchers, their institutions, and the journals that have accepted their manuscripts for publication. Join us for an historical overview and insights from our speakers about the cost of scientific fraud and the retraction process. 

In addition, there will be time for attendees to participate in an interactive Q&A session.

Date: Thursday, December 8, 2022
Time: 12:30 PM to 1:30 PM, EST
Location – Zoom Webinar – Register Now

Speakers:

Dr. Ivan Oransky, MD, Co-founder of Retraction Watch, Editor in Chief of Spectrum and distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University’s Arthur Carter Journalism Institute
Dr. Ivan Oransky was previously the President of the Association of Health Care Journalists and Vice President of editorial at Medscape. He has held editorial leadership positions at MedPage Today, Reuters Health, Scientific American and The Scientist. He is the recipient of the 2015 John P. McGovern Medal for excellence in biomedical communication from the American Medical Writers Association, and in 2017 was awarded an honorary doctorate in civil laws from The University of the South (Sewanee). In 2019, the judges for the John Maddox Prize, which promotes those who stand up for science in the face of hostility, gave him a commendation for his work at Retraction Watch.

Michael Streeter, Director of Research Integrity & Publishing Ethics at Wiley
Mike Streeter leads Wiley’s work in implementing best practices and policy for ethics and integrity in Wiley’s research portfolio; he champions quality and transparency in journals publishing.  He has worked in academic publishing for the last seventeen years and through that experience recognizes the value of close collaboration and communication with our communities.

Hijacked Journals – A Predatory Journal Scam Sub-type

Predatory journals have been part of the scholarly publishing discussion for a number of years now and numerous efforts have been made to develop training resources and tools to help potential authors establish whether or not a journal they are considering submitting a manuscript to is reputable or not.

Not surprisingly, as consumers are becoming more aware of the existence and threat of predatory publishing, the predators are adapting to this new reality and becoming more sophisticated – or rather – more downright sneaky in their ways. Which brings us to “Hijacked Journals”.

What is a “Hijacked Journal”?

A hijacked journal is basically a predatory journal that is not just trying to mimic another established journal by adopting a similar title and “look” to their publication, but rather is actually using a legitimate journal’s exact title, ISSN information, and other meta-data. This scam can happen to current titles published by larger publishers, but likely is more easily carried out successfully using journal titles that may have been recently ceased or to smaller society or university publications.

What can you do to protect yourself?

The usual strategies for avoiding predatory publishers still apply to avoiding hijacked journals. That said – taking extra steps to investigate whether or not a publication has ceased or has had a change in publisher is highly recommended as this step will help to determine if even more scrutiny of the journal is warranted. Tools like the NLM Catalog and Ulrichs can be used to verify this information.

Furthermore, to help authors not fall victim to this hijacking scam, the diligent folks at Retraction Watch have begun compiling a spreadsheet of journal titles that they have classified as “hijacked” in their new Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker. Learn more by reading their recent blog post announcing this new tool.

Additional reading:

Questions? Ask Us at the MSK Library.