The Chinese government is going on the offensive against scientists who dupe journals by creating fraudulent reviews of submitted papers. A coalition of agencies led by the science ministry announced on 14 June that the government would suspend the grants of researchers involved in such fraud, which surfaced earlier this year when a cancer journal retracted 107 research papers from Chinese authors. And funding agencies in China promised to increase policing of the scientific community to prevent similar deceptions. The harsh penalties and stricter enforcement were decided earlier this month at a meeting of representatives of the science ministry, the health ministry, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and other agencies. The meeting was a response to retractions made in April by the journal Tumor Biology, after its publisher, Springer Nature, found that reviews submitted in support of 107 papers had been fabricated. Fraud in peer review is a global problem. It occurs when researchers — or companies acting on their behalf — suggest scientists as potential peer reviewers, but the e-mails supplied for the reviewers route back to the authors or the companies, who then write spurious reviews supporting publication. Online companies that orchestrate fake peer review are among the main targets of the crackdown. The coalition hopes to enlist the government’s Cyberspace Administration of China, the agency that censors the Internet in China. It could identify the culprits behind the companies, says Yang Wei, head of the NSFC. Surprisingly, only 17 of the 107 retracted papers were funded by the NSFC, even though the agency supports more than 60% of Chinese scientific research. The NSFC found that more than 30 of its pending grant applications were based on the retracted papers. Those applications have been canceled. The success of the government’s crackdown will depend on whether it can link strict implementation to a fairer system of evaluation for doctors and researchers, says Jiang.
To read more, click China on fake peer reviews.
