Result of academic fraud investigation announced

The result of an investigation into a scandal in which a foreign medical journal retracted 107 papers from China because of peer review fraud was announced by the Ministry of Science and Technology on Thursday.

The medical journal Tumor Biology, published by Springer Nature, retracted the papers in April, after an investigation found the peer review process had been compromised by using fabricated email addresses of reviewers.

Of the 521 authors implicated, 11 were deemed innocent with 24 still under investigation. Among the remaining authors, 486 authors were found guilty of misconduct at various levels. A total of 102 were found to be mainly responsible, 70 secondarily responsible and 314 did not participate in fraud, said He Defang, a ministry official in charge of rule enforcement.