not sure if posted before?
Washington Post, 27 March 2015
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...-systematic-scheme-may-affect-other-journals/
Washington Post, 27 March 2015
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...-systematic-scheme-may-affect-other-journals/
A major publisher of scholarly medical and science articles has retracted 43 papers because of “fabricated” peer reviews amid signs of a broader fake peer review racket affecting many more publications.
The publisher is BioMed Central, based in the United Kingdom, which puts out 277 peer-reviewed journals.
...
Meanwhile, the Committee on Publication Ethics, a multidisciplinary group that includes more than 9,000 journal editors, issued a statement suggesting a much broader potential problem. The committee, it said, “has become aware of systematic, inappropriate attempts to manipulate the peer review processes of several journals across different publishers.” Those journals are now reviewing manuscripts to determine how many may need to be retracted, it said.