Acadamia Europaea Fellow Got Involved in Unethical Editorial Practices
CHEN Jianmin, a professor at Fudan University and a fellow of Acadamia Europaea, is currently accused to get involved in questionable editorial practices. The investigation by the 5GH team revealed that he got involved in 44 cases of unethical practices, including 2 cases of Edit-for-Themself and 42 cases of Edit-for-Pal [1], all of these editorial practices were given to the articles on “Science of the Total Environment”, an Elsevier title.
Edit-for-Themself
The 5GH team found two cases of Edit-for-Themself [2-3] by CHEN, causing conflict of interest. In the corrigendums [4-5] to other articles [6-7] on Environmental Research, another Elsevier title, the publisher addressed that this kind of editorial practices is not allowed, stating “it is the policy of the journal and Elsevier that editors must not be involved in decisions about papers which they have written themselves”. Until recently, the publisher and the journal “Science of the Total Environment” do not post any corrigendum to article [2] and [3].
Edit-for-Pal
Besides, CHEN got involved in 42 cases of Edit-for-Pal practices, including 8 cases to the articles coauthored by GUO Hai, a professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, 28 cases to the articles coauthored by FU Pingqing, a professor works for multiple institutions, and 6 cases to the articles from other authors at Fudan university, the institution CHEN is currently working for.
CHEN has long academic relationship with GUO and FU. CHEN and GUO coauthored on several articles which can dated back to 2012 and until recently, such as [8] and others, while the coauthorship between CHEN and FU started in 2016 or earlier, including [9] and others. These suggest that CHEN’s editorial practices on articles [10], [11] and others may cause conflict of interest.
On the other hand, CHEN received Editor-for-Pal from GUO and FU, including 11 Edit-for-Pal from GUO ([12] and others), as well as 11 Edit-for-Pal from FU ([13] and others), totally 22 Edit-for-Pal.
Up to now, CHEN has published 61 articles (research articles and reviews only) on Science of the Total Environment, over 1/3 were earned with questionable editorial practices, 2 Edit-for-Them (a.k.a. self-edited) and 22 Edit-for-Pal from GUO and FU.
Previously, the 5GH team found other unethical editorial practices from a researcher group (GAO-LI-WANG-AHMED) on Science of the Total Environment [14], and from the Editor-in-Chief of Environmental Research, WANG Aijie [15], suggesting widespread of these concerning editorial practices in the academic publishing industry. The 5GH team and the scientific community urge the publishers to take actions against these unethical practices.
Reference
[1] CHEN Jianmin’s Questionable Editorial Practices
[2] 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.146390
[3] 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.137756
[4] 10.1016/j.envres.2024.120000
[5] 10.1016/j.envres.2024.120001
[6] 10.1016/j.envres.2023.115409
[7] 10.1016/j.envres.2023.116061
[8] 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2016.11.025
[10] 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.174605
[11] 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.176504
[12] 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.176254
