Retraction Watch

by Judy Farrar

One tool in the effort to highlight the fake paper crisis, is the non-profit Retraction Watch blog and database of retracted scientific papers. According to their blog, after they launched the website in 2010, the database listed about 200 papers.  Each year has seen an increase and as of now the database contains over 50,000 entries.  In September 2023 the Retraction Watch dataset was purchased by Crossref, an organization that assigns digital object identifiers, and was made a public resource with secure funding. Search the database at https://retractiondatabase.org/RetractionSearch.aspx

The Retraction Watch blog features topics such as the “The top 10 most highly cited retracted papers,” and “Retracted coronavirus (COVID-19) papers,” which currently lists over 450 retracted publications, and “Papers and peer reviews with evidence of ChatGPT writing.”  A recent feature is the Hijacked Journal tracker, a spreadsheet identifying hijacked journal domains based on an analysis of the archives of clone journals: https://retractionwatch.com/the-retraction-watch-hijacked-journal-checker

Caution sign
Photo by Oliver Hale on Unsplash

Research and Publishing Roundup

Fall 2024 was a busy semester in research and publishing! Here are some of the accomplishments of our researchers:

The Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture announced three new publications from Tagus Press: The Undiscovered Island by Darrell Kastin, Migration, Mill Work, and Portuguese Communities in New England edited by Cristiana Bastos, Bela Feldman-Bianco, and Miguel Moniz, and Leaving Pico by Frank X. Gaspar.

Dean of the School for Marine Science & Technology Kevin Stokesbury co-authored an article titled “Anticipating the winds of change: A baseline assessment of Northeastern US continental shelf surficial substrates (2024-07-26)”. This study provides insights regarding substrates in offshore wind farms compared with other locations and how those environments are affected.

Professor Avijit Gangopadhyay (Estuarine & Ocean Sciences) co-authored an article, “Enhanced coastal upwelling indices for Moroccan Atlantic Coast, their force–response variability and sensitivity to extreme events between 1993 and 2021″. This study links seasonal to interannual variability of Moroccan upwelling.

Associate Professor Nikolay Anguelov (Public Policy) co-published an article “Keeping the academy queer: Lessons from the queer community for the future of public affairs education.” The article uses heteronormativities, creative class, and queer geographies better to understand the current state of the LGBTQIA+ community and explore the heteronormative and cisnormative assumptions about the community.

Assistant Research Professor Lauran Brewster (Fisheries Oceanography), Professor Steve Cadrin (Fisheries Oceanography), and Fiona Edwards (Fisheries Oceanography MS Candidate) co-published an article titled “Multispecies Portfolios of U.S. Marine Fisheries: Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management Reduces Economic Risk.” This article suggests using a portfolio optimization approach to manage fisheries, considering species interactions and economic factors.

Assistant Professor Geoffrey McDonald (Law) was featured in an article discussing the effects of a provision of the state’s housing bond bill. The article discusses a provision in the state’s housing bond bill that seals eviction records for tenants who faced no-fault evictions, won cases or had cases dismissed in housing court

Joshua Carberry (Engineering and Applied Science Doctoral Candidate) recently published a paper titled “Real-Time Rejuvenation Scheduling for Cloud Systems with Virtualized Software Spares” in the Journal of Systems & Software. The paper proposes a hybrid approach to combat Mandelbugs in cloud systems.

Commonwealth Professor Dan Braha (Decision & Information Sciences) wrote an article about the measurable patterns of civil unrest within society by applying Physics concepts to social phenomena.

Assistant Teaching Professor Donna Demanarig (Psychology) recently co-published “Mending Fragile Alliances to Fight Racism: A Developing Framework for Cross-Racial/Ethnic Solidarity” in American Psychologist. The article posits a framework to provide a foundation for research, training, clinical, and community work toward an interdisciplinary approach to cross-racial/ethnic solidarity accompliceship.

Ian Gifford (Physics MS Candidate) and Professor Avijit Gangopadhyay (Estuarine & Ocean Sciences) recently co-published “Synchronicity of the Gulf Stream path downstream of Cape Hatteras and the region of maximum wind stress curl” in Scientific Reports. The article, based on Gifford’s Master’s Thesis, discusses wind patterns and their impacts on Cape Hatteras.

Emeritus Professor Fahri Karakaya (Management & Marketing) was interviewed in an article about bank bonuses and customer habits regarding switching banks.

Associate Professor Jennifer R. Mammen (Adult Nursing), Assistant Professor Mirinda Tyo (Adult Nursing), and Clinical Assistant Professor Joyce Cadorette co-published “Understanding what aspects of Parkinson’s disease matter most to patients and families” in Scientific Reports. The article examines what is important to people with Parkinson’s disease vs. family over time through a qualitative content-analysis online survey.

Assistant Teaching Professor Basil H. Aboul-Enein (Health & Society) co-published “Humor and Laughter in Health Promotion Interventions and the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Disciplinary Narrative Review” in Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine. The article explores perspectives and research findings of studies on the role of humor and laughter in health promotion and direct care interventions throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ancil Alexander (’28, Arts & Sciences Undergrad) was featured in a piece about his journey as a football player after only playing the sport for one year at Taunton High School.

Professor Doug Roscoe (Political Science), Dean of the Honors College Amy Shapiro, and Associate Professor Brian Ayotte (Psychology) co-published “Domains of baseless belief and the characteristics of believers” in Social Science Quarterly. The article looks to determine if there are discrete domains of baseless beliefs and to identify the psychological and cognitive factors most closely associated with each type.

Professor Tim Walker (History) was featured in an article for his project on historical weather data from antique whaling ship logbooks. The project uses historical data to create more accurate climate models and better understand how climate continues to change.

Professor Anupama Arora (English & Communication, Women’s & Gender Studies) co-published “Pathaan, precarity and the Muslim question in neoliberal India” in New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film. Arora also co-edited the journal. The article focuses on the 2023 blockbuster action spy-thriller Indian film Pathaan and what it says about stars, fandom, masculinity, neoliberalism, and precarity in Bollywood.

Professor Brian Glynn Williams (History) discussed the recent missile attacks between Iran and Israel in an article by WCVB. “I just think this is a historically dangerous moment,” said Williams.

Professor Stacy Latt Savage’s (Art & Design) “Sculpture Monster” project was featured in FiberNow magazine. “Sculpture Monster” was created with over 30,000 plastic “nips” bottles. Partnering with “Be the Solution for Pollution,” Latt Savage, fellow artist Rebecca McGee Tuck, and UMassD students showcased the sculpture at New Bedford’s Earth Day parade to raise awareness about plastic pollution.

Assistant Teaching Professor Basil H. Aboul-Enein (Health & Society) co-published “Effectiveness of nutrition interventions targeting university-level student populations across the League of Arab States: a systematic scoping review” in Global Health Promotion. The article examines and appraises the effectiveness of nutrition interventions in university student populations across the League of Arab States.

Executive Director of Economic Development and Community Partnerships Michael Goodman was featured in an article about the workforce trends related to home healthcare and the influx of migrant workers from Haiti.

Associate Professor Jennifer Mammen (Nursing), Assistant Professor Miranda Tyo (Nursing), and Joyce Cadorette (Adult Nursing Doctoral Candidate) were featured in an article for their study titled “Understanding what aspects of Parkinson’s disease matter most to patients and families.” This study seeks to determine important differences between family and patient perspectives of what matters and changes over time with Parkinson’s disease.  

Associate Professor Stephen Witzig (Education), Rachel Stronach (STEM Education Doctoral Candidate), Usman Ijaz (STEM Education Doctoral Candidate), and Shah Syed Wazir (STEM Education Doctoral Candidate) were featured in a Chronicle segment for their engagement in a climate science learning project at the Lloyd Center for the Environment.

Professor Mark Paige (Public Policy) discussed the issues surrounding school districts’ use of nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) to protect student privacy while maintaining transparency and employees’ rights to speak out.

Professor Doug Roscoe (Political Science) discussed the common phenomena in Massachusetts of unopposed incumbents, particularly in New Bedford’s state Legislature races, which can lead to a lack of competition.

Professor Brian Glyn Williams (History) was interviewed on the recent killing of a top leader of Hamas and the potential impacts on the region.

Akira Harper (STEM Education Doctoral Candidate) was featured in an article for participating in the University of Buffalo’s Visiting Future Faculty program. This initiative aims to showcase the impact that scholars from traditionally underrepresented populations in North America have on higher education.

Associate Professor Nikolay Anguelov (Public Policy) co-published “Recycling waste macadamia nut shells as a low hydrothermally engineered activated carbon for the efficient removal of a RIT navy blue textile dye from aqueous solutions” in Materials Research Express . The paper provides an overview of commercial textile dyeing technologies, the carcinogenic pollution their use causes, and the extant filtration technologies for textile dye wastewater, which are largely inefficient and expensive.

Assistant Teaching Professor Basil Aboul Enein (Health & Society) recently co-published an article titled “Effectiveness of Cartoons Comics and Animation-Based Sexual Health Promotion and Education Interventions: A Scoping Review” in the International Journal of Sexual Health. The article examines the effectiveness of interventions involving cartoons, comics, and animations on sexual health education and wellness.

Do you need help accessing any of these publications? The librarians have you covered. Contact our reference staff with your request: https://lib.umassd.edu/about/staff-directory/contact-rils/

 

LibreTexts Jumpstart Training

Have you ever considered creating your own openly licensed textbook?

LibreTexts is an Open Educational Resources (OER) platform for creating, customizing, and sharing accessible, interactive textbooks, adaptive homework, and ancillary materials. The Claire T. Carney Library is now a member of LibreNet which gives us extra training and support for creating resources with LibreTexts.

There will be an online session from 2:30pm – 4:30pm on November 20th which will provide an overview of LibreTexts. Please bring your questions about the platform and how you can use it to create high quality course materials. Contact Emma Wood for the Zoom link or to access the recording after the session.

In the News: The Fake Paper Crisis

by Megan Fletcher

The recent surge in academic research papers being retracted or corrected due to issues like faulty data, scientific misconduct, and outright fraud is a significant threat to the credibility of academic publishing and the broader academic community. The rise of artificial intelligence has exacerbated this problem, making it more difficult for academic publishers and researchers to manage.

To address this issue, it is imperative for academic publishers, researchers, and institutions to work together to implement stricter quality control measures and promote ethical research practices. This could involve investing in advanced tools for detecting plagiarism and fraud, strengthening peer review processes, and fostering a culture of transparency and accountability within the academic community.

Various news outlets, including the New York Times and The Guardian, have covered this topic. If you’re interested check out the recent articles below:

Image by brotiN biswaS on Pexels

 

Open Access Week Feature: A UMD Collaboration in an OA Journal

Cross-posted from the Claire T. Carney Library Blog

International Open Access Week (October 21-27, 2024) is a time to recognize free and accessible research and scholarship and to inspire scholars to engage in the advantageous OA model in publishing. The term Open Access refers to scholarly material that is available digitally free of charge and without other access barriers. Today we will highlight a UMass Dartmouth faculty member who has published along with a UMass Dartmouth student under a Creative Commons license in an Open Access journal.

Nicholas Zambrotta is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Psychology department whose research interests include morality, political polarization, and social support and health related behaviors. In early 2024 Zambrotta published an article called “Attitude Changes Among College Students Post-Pandemic” with Alex Goncalo who was working on his BS in Finance. Goncalo has since earned his MS, and has gone on to pursue his PhD in Finance at the University of South Florida. Their study “measured happiness, optimism, and psychological well-being in a sample of 182 college students via an electronic Qualtrics questionnaire to identify predictors of state optimism and examine potential differences in these variables between class rankings.” The results of their survey and analysis can be read and shared (with attribution) by any researcher thanks to the OA model of their selected publication, Modern Psychological Studies.

The journal is managed by undergraduate students at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga, and not only is it student-led, but Modern Psychological Studies focuses on publishing quality articles by undergraduate students. Regarding the review process, Goncalo says, “Their rigorous review process was enlightening, which contributed greatly to this undeniably invaluable experience.” Authors who choose to publish with MPS actually retain their copyright under a Non-Exclusive Distribution License. This arrangement protects freedoms of the authors, while the Creative Commons licenses applied to each article ensure that all researchers can benefit from the work. 

Kudos to Zambrotta and Goncalo on their OA publication

Image by Nick Shockey, licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en, available at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Open_Access_symbol.png

 

International Open Access Week 2024

Cross-posted from the Claire T. Carney Library Blog

Open Access (OA) is a publishing model that values access over commercialization and makes scholarly material like research articles and books available to the public at no cost. International Open Access Week (October 21 – 27, 2024) is a time to recognize the importance of OA and to raise awareness. When information is readily available to all researchers, it can be more widely read, cited, and expanded. Are you interested in learning more about Open Access and breaking down paywalls? Consider attending these OA Week webinars hosted in Massachusetts:

Paper Retraction: The Process and Why It Happens

by Sara Pike

This year, our committee will look at the sham and retracted paper crisis in more depth and share information with the community through this blog. We will begin by providing an overview and information about paper retraction, which is the flagging of a published work in a journal due to a serious issue like data falsification or major errors in the research that are discovered after the publication process is complete.

Discussion in academic circles and in the news about research integrity, paper retractions and falsified research continues to be a major topic and a major source of concern for academia and society at large, as examples of recent articles attest.

“1 in 7 scientific papers is fake, suggests study that author calls ‘wildly nonsystematic’” https://retractionwatch.com/2024/09/24/1-in-7-scientific-papers-is-fake-suggests-study-that-author-calls-wildly-nonsystematic/

“Whistleblowers flagged 300 scientific papers for retraction. Many journals ghosted them” https://www.science.org/content/article/whistleblowers-flagged-300-scientific-papers-for-retraction-many-journals-ghosted-them

Paper retraction goes beyond the correction of mistakes in published papers, and should be considered by either the author(s) or an editorial board if there are ethical concerns related to plagiarism, peer review, unreliable data, unauthorized use of data, copyright infringement, conflicts of interest and the like. https://publicationethics.org/retraction-guidelines

COPE, the Committee on Publication Ethics, provides this and much more information, including formal guidelines for paper retraction that many publishers rely on. If authors become aware of relevant issues with their work, they are strongly encouraged to explore self-retraction of papers by contacting the editorial board of the publication in question. In the months ahead we will explore topics related to paper mills and falsification of research articles as we seek to support scholars and their work.

UMassD Education Professor Surpasses 10,000 Downloads for Globally Accessible Book Published with MIT Press

by Emma Wood

MIT Press launched its Direct to Open (D2O) model in 2021 to make a shift toward Open Access (OA) publishing. The D2O framework is one of many transformative agreements emerging in the publishing world. The idea is to change the role of subscription funds. Libraries have always paid for read access to content, but the focus now is on channeling those funds toward the production of open access books and articles. In the MIT Press agreement, participating libraries contribute a membership fee, and the members support the publication of around 90 new books per year that can be accessed freely by anyone to promote equity and sustainability in scholarly material. As an added incentive, D2O libraries have access to an archive of over 2,500 titles that would otherwise be gated. UMass Dartmouth’s Claire T. Carney Library is currently a member.

When you browse the collection, look for a popular title co-edited by Sheila Macrine, Professor in the Department of Education here at UMass Dartmouth and Jennifer Fugate, Associate Professor of Health Services Psychology (PSYD) at Kansas City University.

Sheila Macrine, PhD

MIT Press announced that they successfully reached their funding goal in 2024, and Macrine’s book was featured as one of nine OA books that have received over ten thousand downloads, and altmetrics (a system of tracking research attention) has seen 264 X posts from 154 X users, with an upper bound of 752,982 followers. The book is called Movement Matters, and according to the MIT Press description it “introduces a new model, translational learning sciences research, for interpreting and disseminating the latest empirical findings in the burgeoning field of embodied cognition. The book provides an up-to-date, inclusive, and essential resource for those involved in educational planning, design, and pedagogical approaches.”

“Movement Matters” is groundbreaking not only because it is available in an open format through a distinguished press, but because it bridges the gap between the latest neuroscience on sensorimotor integration and mirror neurons on teaching pedagogy and learning. Macrine gathered a team of top scholars to translate cutting-edge neuroscience research into practical teaching strategies that will benefit all researchers without barrier to access.

The complete book can be downloaded in PDF format, and it is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

OER Commons 101 Session

The fall semester is officially here! And the good news is there is still time to adopt Open Educational Resources for your courses. If you are interested in how to get started locating OERs, register for an OER Commons 101 session – Thursday September 12th at 11am. 

Register Here!

To get started, take a look at some of the resources that can be found in the platform for sharing open educational resources created and adopted by faculty from Massachusetts Public Higher Education Institutions – Open Massachusetts: A Public Higher Education Repository

Research and Publishing Roundup

Kudos to the following members of the UMass Dartmouth community on their research and publishing accomplishments:

Associate Dean of the College of Engineering Iren Valova participated in a panel on artificial intelligence at the Associated Industries of Massachusetts’ Commonwealth Conversation series. Valova joined Dell Technologies and TD Bank officials to discuss how artificial intelligence is changing the business landscape across industries and sectors of the economy.

Professor Avijit Gangopadhyay (Estuarine & Ocean Sciences) co-authored “On the evidence of helico‑spiralling recirculation within coherent cores of eddies using Lagrangian approach” in Nature’s Scientific Reports. The article aims to advance comprehension of coherent eddies’ structural characteristics and their internal dynamics.

Professor Geoff McDonald (Law) was interviewed for an article about post-foreclosure evictions. Based on his research, McDonald focuses on technical bankruptcy questions and the moral basis of bankruptcy, including the interrelated issues of debt, justice, and forgiveness.

Professor Brian Williams (History) authored an article in The Conversation on Ukraine’s defeat of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet due to their superior weapons and naval tactics.

Professor Chad McGuire (Public Policy) published “Using the Legal Concept of Fault Attribution to Analyze the Effectiveness of Coastal Climate Change Adaptation in the United States” in The Palgrave Handbook of Environmental Policy and Law. The article introduces the legal concept of fault attribution as a framework for assessing the effectiveness of current national coastal climate change policies.

Professor Kenneth Manning (Political Science) discussed the intricacies and “luck” involved in the recent Supreme Court ruling regarding presidential immunity and the impact on former President Trump.

Executive Director of Economic Development and Community Partnerships Michael Goodman was featured in the Summer 2024 issue of MassBenchmarks with his highlight titled “State of the State Economy.” The chapter discusses the Massachusetts economy’s slowing in the face of continued inflation, high interest rates, and slight downtrends in job growth.

Ethan Moyer (’25) was featured in an article for his artistic contribution to the Envision Resilience Mural Project in New Bedford. Moyer’s graphic will be turned into a mural that serves as a visual reminder of the impact of climate change

Do you need help accessing any of these publications? The librarians have you covered. Contact our reference staff with your request: https://lib.umassd.edu/about/staff-directory/contact-rils/