Publishing staff from the Journal of Food Process Engineering, retracted a published paper ‘due to a breach of reviewer confidentiality’ in which it appears to plagiarize an unpublished paper submitted to another journal.
According to Retraction Watch, a blog that monitors and reports on withdrawals of scientific papers, it is unclear who is at fault.
Nasir Mehmood Khan, corresponding author of the retracted paper: ‘Potentiality of Neem (Azadirachta indica) Powder in Rheology Modification of Oil-in-Water Emulsion,’ accused his students of using ‘data and results,’ which they ‘man[i]pulated in their work.’
The journal’s editors-in-chief, M. Elena Castell-Perez and Rosana Moreira, added that Dr Khan, who is assistant professor at Shaheed Benazir Bhutto University in Pakistan, had not challenged the breach of reviewer confidentially despite claiming his students had accessed his accounts.
Castell-Perez was only made aware of the discrepancy after the unpublished paper’s author highlighted the infringement.
Only published papers are checked for plagiarism or similarities against published articles.
“That is why I suspected access to the material could have only [been] possible through the review process from another journal,” she said.
The journal’s retraction notice states the research paper was published online on 23 October 2014.