Foo Jong Yong Abdiel, Tan Xin Ji Alan
a Electronic and Computer Engineering Division, School of Engineering, Ngee Ann Polytechnic , Singapore , Singapore.
Account Res. 2014;21(3):198-210. doi: 10.1080/08989621.2013.848799.
Studies have indicated that the number and frequency of fraudulent publications being retracted are not subsiding even with greater awareness of such incidents in the recent decades. In this study, the trends of retraction period, number of citations and coauthors of 5 selected researchers who had ≥ 15 fraudulent publications retracted were analyzed. The obtained results shows that the retraction period is 48.96 ± 32.16 months for the 113 publications affiliated to the 5 studied researchers. There are a total of 180 coauthors with 6.40 ± 3.26 coauthors per researcher's retracted publication. The linear regression analysis indicates that there is limited correlation (R(2) = .008) between the citation counts and retraction period. The p value for multiple F-tests to assess the number of coauthors to a fraudulent publication on an interresearcher basis is found to be ranging from < .001 to .458. It is also found that a better correlation (R(2) = .592) exists between the likelihood of a researcher to involve different individuals for isolated fraudulent publications while only selecting very few to be their frequent coauthors of their mischievous acts. With this study, the possible use of coauthors as a strategy for publishing fraudulent work and a potential approach to tighten coauthorship are discussed.
研究表明，即使近几十年来对这类事件的认识有所提高，被撤回的欺诈性出版物的数量和频率仍未减少。在这项研究中，分析了5名有≥15篇欺诈性出版物被撤回的选定研究人员的撤回期、被引用次数和共同作者数量的趋势。研究结果显示，这5名被研究人员的113篇出版物的撤回期为48.96±32.16个月。共有180名共同作者，每名研究人员被撤回的出版物平均有6.40±3.26名共同作者。线性回归分析表明，被引用次数与撤回期之间的相关性有限（R(2)=0.008）。评估不同研究人员的欺诈性出版物共同作者数量的多重F检验的p值范围为<.001至.458。研究还发现，研究人员在单独的欺诈性出版物中与不同个体合作，而在其恶意行为中只选择极少数人作为其频繁的共同作者，这两者之间存在较好的相关性（R(2)=0.592）。通过这项研究，讨论了将共同作者作为发表欺诈性作品的一种策略的可能性以及加强共同作者署名规范的潜在方法。
