107 China papers were rejected by foreign journals and were accused of fraud.

　　On April 20th, the journal Tumor Biology (hereinafter translated as Tumor Biology) under SAGE Publishing House in the United States issued a retraction statement, announcing that 107 papers written by China authors would be revoked, which were suspected of providing false peer review information in violation of regulations. Another international organization, The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), claimed: "These illegal operations seem to be planned by some third-party organizations, which provide such illegal services for the authors of papers."

　　107 articles were rejected by journals.

　　The reporter of Beijing Youth Daily saw on the website of Tumor Biology that the journal released a retraction statement on April 20th: "According to the recommendation of the Publishing Ethics Committee, publishers and editors decided to retract the manuscript. After a thorough investigation, we believe that the paper has violated the rules in the peer review process. "

　　In the retraction statement, the journal listed a statement posted on the website of the Publishing Ethics Committee, which stated: "The organization has realized that several journals belonging to different publishers have systematic and inappropriate manipulation in the peer review process. These operations seem to be planned by some third-party organizations, which provide this service for the authors of the papers. "

　　According to the reporter of Beiqing Daily, Oncology Biology is the official magazine of the International Society of Oncology and Biomarkers, which once belonged to Springer-Verlag Publishing House. The website introduces its impact factor as 2.926. Springer Publishing House is one of the largest scientific and technological publishing houses in the world, which is famous for publishing academic publications. At the end of 2016, "Tumor Biology" was transferred to American SAGE Publishing House. Since January this year, American SAGE Publishing House has started publishing this journal.

　　The author of the withdrawn manuscript involves many hospital doctors.

　　The reporter of Beiqing Daily noticed that there were 107 papers mentioned in Tumor Biology that were withdrawn, involving many cities in China. Most of the authors are hospital doctors, and their institutions are affiliated hospitals of domestic universities, including Zhejiang University Affiliated Hospital, Shanghai Jiaotong University Affiliated Hospital, Jinan Central Hospital affiliated to Shandong University, Xiangya No.1, No.2 and No.3 Hospitals and other well-known hospitals.

　　Yesterday, the reporter of Beiqing Daily tried to contact the author of the withdrawn paper listed in the journal. Among them, among several authors published in Regulation of Activating Protein-4-Associated Metastases of Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Cells by Mir-144 in 2016, Zhang Zefeng, deputy chief physician of the Department of Thoracic Surgery of the Fourth Hospital of Hebei Medical University, admitted that he had published a paper in Tumor Biology at the same time, but he said that he only participated in the relevant research as a member of the scientific research team, and he was not clear about the specific process of publishing the paper. Liu Junfeng, another chief physician of the hospital, refused the interview on the grounds that the identity of the reporter could not be verified.

　　Peer review is accused of fraud.

　　In a statement issued by the Publishing Ethics Committee, it was mentioned: "Some institutions that provide services for authors to publish papers are suspected of fraud in peer review."

　　Peer review mentioned in the retraction statement is a kind of review procedure, and the publishing unit will choose whether to accept the manuscript or not by this method. The specific operation is to let other experts and scholars in the same field review the academic works to be published. In the peer review, the real names and e-mail addresses of experts and scholars participating in the review need to be provided, and the editorial department of academic journals will confirm the review opinions to these experts and scholars by e-mail.

　　Although the names of the peer-reviewed experts of 107 papers that have been rejected are true, their e-mail addresses are suspected to be false. Because many experts who mentioned their names, publishing institutions have their e-mails, which can’t match the e-mail addresses provided in these papers.

　　An industry insider who has been engaged in peer review told the reporter of Beiqing Daily that the editorial department was not sure whether the review comments were true because it was suspected that the email address of the review experts was false.

　　The industry believes that these papers with suspected problems did not fulfill their review duties at the beginning of publication. Because even if the author of the paper provides false peer review information, the editorial department of the journal can contact the experts and scholars who are named for review to verify it, because many of those experts and scholars are in the expert database of academic journals, but they have not verified it.

　　The reporter of Beiqing Daily noticed that in August 2015, springer announced the withdrawal of 64 papers published in its 10 academic journals, all of which were from China authors. As early as March 2015, British publishing house BMC announced the withdrawal of 43 academic articles, 41 of which were written by China. In these two cases, publishers gave reasons for "suspected fraud in peer review".

　　A doctor in the affiliated hospital of Zhejiang University, who asked not to be named, said that no matter how busy the doctor is, he can’t find a third-party agency to represent the paper. "Under normal circumstances, our contributions to international journals are carried out in the journal official website, and we operate in the order of instructions. The paper intermediary is unreliable. If something goes wrong, even the doctor may not be able to do it. Once the paper is considered fraudulent, it will be ruined. "

　　Text/reporter Guo Linlin Intern reporter Xu Lina Liu Sijia