A Major International Scandal for the Nation's Scientific Community

58 articles written by 258 Iranian researchers have been suspended by the publisher of the prestigious scientific site Nature due to scientific fraud and misuse of other researchers' scientific texts.

According to Click, the medical division of this prestigious global scientific institution has also suspended 28 articles, and investigations into another 40 articles are still ongoing. Meanwhile, it is reported that the Springer site, which is also active in publishing reputable scientific articles, has removed 30 articles submitted by Iranian researchers from its site and is investigating 9 other articles.

The recent investigations and the discovery of these scientific thefts are a wake-up call for other publishers to carefully examine the accuracy of the material they publish; unfortunately, the recent case is considered a potential danger to the global scientific community, and a solution must be devised as soon as possible to prevent the recurrence of such cases.

All the articles removed by Springer in this case contained evidence of scientific manipulation and rewriting, and in 70 percent of them, scientific theft was also observed. In the articles submitted to BMC, manipulation in the original authorship is clearly evident in all cases, with 57 percent involving pure rewriting and 93 percent involving scientific theft.

Similar cases had also occurred in 2015, and both institutions announced that if such cases of article fraud are repeated, the researcher will be prevented from directly submitting articles to the site, and all of their articles will be removed.

In light of the recent scandal, some of the original authors whose articles were forged have become aware of the issue, and a number of them have reacted to it.

It remains to be seen how the authorities will react to this major international scandal and what the response will be to the so-called researchers who have committed this shameful act in an international arena and tarnished the nation's scientific image.

Download the list of fraudulent articles