A year later, Springer Nature journal hasn’t updated article with fake reference to our cofounder
Some people might happily take credit for an article in Nature they did not write. That’s not the case when the credited author is a cofounder of Retraction Watch and the attribution comes in a citation to an article that doesn’t exist. The reference appeared in a November 2025 paper, published in DARU Journal of … Continue reading A year later, Springer Nature journal hasn’t updated article with…
One year after a Nature journal article credited Ivan Oransky, cofounder of Retraction Watch, with a nonexistent reference, the issue remains unresolved. The reference appeared in a November 2025 paper published in the DARU Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, which criticized post-publication peer review platforms like PubPeer. The fabricated reference claimed Oransky authored an article in 2019 titled "A new kind of watchdog is shaking up research."
Springer Nature, the journal's publisher, acknowledged receiving complaints about the issue but made no progress in correcting the error. The DARU Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences added a note six days after publication stating that the Editor-in-Chief would address the concerns following further investigation. Maria Hodges, Springer Nature's publishing director, described the case as complex and explained that it involved a journal owned by an external party.
Abdollahi, the last editor of the paper, stated that he was unaware of the referencing process and that the references were technically correct despite their problems. The paper has been cited twice since its publication, but neither citing paper shares authors with the original. Abdollahi, who has served on COPE's alumni website, now serves as editor-in-chief at Tehran University. Rassoul Dinarvand, also from Tehran University, is the current editor-in-chief.
Written by urgent.news from Retraction Watch's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
