WU Guangheng

What is more interesting, these 14 articles over citing Khamdamov's publications were also coauthored by Khamdamov himself, implying that he got the high number of citations through a practice of high self-citations. At this stage, will the publishers step in for a further investigation?

After an investigation (please find the details of the method at: www.5gh.org.cn/WuGH/2025/00...), we find 14 articles over citing Khamdamov's publications. Over 30% of each article's references were coauthored by Khamdamov.

We came across the Googe Scholar profile of Shoh-jakhon Khamdamov at Tashkent State University of Economics, and noted the abnormal pattern of the citations to Khamdamov. The profile shows that Khamdamov got 382 citations in the year of 2024, the number is 5 times higher than that in the 2023.

I have another question to the publisher guys: What will the publishers do when they find some articles over citing to specific individual after the articles were published?

Sаmаriddin Mаkhmudov coauthored in 13 articles submitted to a specific journal in a single year, no other common author in these articles, and the coauthors are from multiple nations. Do the publishers consider such submission to be usual?

We find 36 articles over citing ZHOU Hao's publications. Over 30% of each article’s references were co-authored by ZHOU Hao, with the China PLA General Hospital (a.k.a. the 301 Hospital). Details: www.5gh.org.cn/WuGH/2025/00...

Some one sent this article to me a few hours ago. And it gets 15 comments on PubPeer until this moment. EiC of the journal got involved in such a matter. My question is: What Springer Nature will react?

Several data/spectra issues are found on this article:

(1) Repeated noise patterns are observed in Figure 5

(2) Repeated data patterns are observed on the Table 3 ad 4

Repeated noise patterns (marked with purple, red and yellow boxes) are observed in Figure 4 of this article. The repeated patterns suggest the spectra were manipulated.

Abnormal data patterns are observed on the standard deviation values on the Table 3 of this article. Several numbers repeat too many times than expect, such as "0.89" repeats 30 times, "0.44" repeats 23 times, "1.09" repeats 13 times. Such abnormal pattern suggests that the data may be manipulated.

The "0%" line and the "0.5%" line (marked with red arrows) seem to be identical to each other.

Wuhan University published two duplicated articles, details: www.5gh.org.cn/WuGH/2025/00...

Do you mean some organizers allow authors to republish previous article without the permit from the publisher(s)/conference organizer(s)?

I have a question: a same author group published a full manuscript on two proceeding of conferences, can this be considered as duplicate submission?

There is a reply (www.5gh.org.cn/WuGH/2025/00...) from the authors. The 5GH Team appreciates the clarification by Dr. Payne.

I am wondering if these ssymmetrical error bars are normal? Details about these error bars remain unclear, including what these error bars represent (the standard deviation or standard error), and how many replications were conducted.

Two articles with a same first author have abnormal error bars.

Solar Energy and Power Electronic Co., Ltd., a suspected fake company, has published 44 articles with fishy authorship on Elsevier and Springer Nature journals.

Details: www.5gh.org.cn/WuGH/2025/00...

We are asking the publishers to step in for further investigations.

How much are tha APCs for multidisciplinary journals

I have two questions: (1) What criteria should I look for to determine whether a publisher/journal is predatory? (2) What actions can be taken if it is a predatory publisher?

Hi, everyone, I want to ask for some input. I came across a publisher in the United States, ConnectSix Scholar Publishing INC (journal.cscholar.com), specifically targets authors from China. I suspect it may be a #PredatoryPublisher. But I am not familiar to this matter.

You can also find the extracted data in the Excel file at: www.5gh.org.cn/WuGH/2025/00...

(2/2) The data extracted is shown in lower-left panel, the reproduced Tauc plot is shown in the lower-right panel, while the original Tauc plot is shown in the upper-right panel.

Mismatch between absorption spectra and Tauc plots is observed in many articles. Here is an example we reproduced the Tauc plot using the data extracted from the blue line in upper-left panel.

Recently, we uncovered data manipulation on multiple articles published by ZHANG Yifeng (张翼峰) with Technical University of Denmark. Details: www.5gh.org.cn/WuGH/2025/00... It seems that they are trying very hard to stop our report in Chinese social media

(2/2) If you have any information or leads regarding hijacked Chinese journals, please feel free to @ me, send me a direct message, or email me at wu[at]5gh.org.cn. Thank you very much!

This year, I've received multiple reports from different individuals indicating that certain Chinese academic journals have been hijacked. We are now conducting a deeper investigation into the patterns of these #HijackedJournal. (1/2)

Asymmetrical error bars are observed in Figure 1, and 2 of this article. Some error bars in those figures show upward displacement relative to the data points, while some show lower displacement. It remains unclear what reason caused these displacement.

Asymmetrical error bars are observed on multiple figures of this article. Some of the error bars have imbalance horizontal bars, with one side longer and the other side shorter. It seems these unusual asymmetrical error bars were resulted in data manipulation

Asymmetrical error bars are observed on Figure 2a of this article, with thicker upper bars and thinner lower bars. It remains unknown if these unusual asymmetrical error bars were caused by improper plotting setting, or they were resulted in data manipulation.