The publisher of a high-profile, now-corrected study on black plastics has been removed from a critical index of academic journals after failing to meet quality criteria, according to a report by Retraction Watch.
On December 16, Clarivate—a scholarly publication analytics company—removed the journal Chemosphere from its platform, the Web of Science, which is a key index for academic journals. The indexing platform tracks citations and calculates journal "impact factors," a proxy for relevance in its field. It's a critical metric not only for the journals but for the academic authors of the journal's articles, who use the score in their pursuit of promotions and research funding.
To be included in the Web of Science, Clarivate requires journals to follow editorial quality criteria. In an email to Ars Technica, Clarivate confirmed that Chemosphere was removed for "not meeting one or more of the quality criteria." According to Retraction Watch, Chemosphere has retracted eight articles this month and published 60 expressions of concern since April.
In a December 12 news release, Chemosphere acknowledged the quality concerns and laid out steps it will take to improve its editorial process. Those include improvements to article vetting and peer review, along with assurances that articles will be retracted if there's evidence of policy breaches.
"We believe that these measures will help us regain the standard of research integrity that has always been so important to us," the news release stated.
Professor_Grift on December 20th, 2024 at 16:01 UTC »
Yeah, I'm just slowly getting rid of plastic...
clorox2 on December 20th, 2024 at 15:27 UTC »
The important part: "Corrected, the article notes that the exposure potential from kitchen utensils is actually less than a tenth of the limit considered safe by the Environmental Protection Agency. Further, the study found flame retardant contamination in less than 10 percent of the 203 household products it examined—and only about 8 percent of 109 kitchen utensils."