Elsevier is investigating the journal Geoscience Frontiers after a PubPeer thread flagged an editorial advisor whose articles in the journal were edited by his frequent co-authors.
The editorial advisor, M. Santosh, is a professor at the University of Adelaide in Australia and a “Highly Cited Researcher” with more than 1,500 published articles, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.
The PubPeer commenter, “Desmococcus antarctica,” noted that two associate editors of the journal, Vinod O. Samuel of Yonsei University in Seoul and Erath Shaji of the University of Kerala in Thiruvananthapuram, India, are often listed as “Handling Editors” of Santosh’s articles published in Geoscience Frontiers — despite each frequently publishing other work with him.
A representative from Elsevier told us the publisher was looking into the matter, adding that “we expect our publishing partners to uphold our publishing policies, including the proper conduct of peer-review.” Elsevier publishes Geoscience Frontiers on behalf of China University of Geosciences (Beijing) and Peking University.
None of the researchers have responded to our request for comment, nor has Xuanxue Mo, editor-in-chief of the journal and professor at China University of Geosciences (Beijing).
Samuel edited at least 20 of Santosh’s papers in Geoscience Frontiers from 2017 to 2024, according to the PubPeer post. “Due to the massiveness of the scale on which this happened,” the Pub Peer comment stops at 20 instances, Desmococcus states.
Samuel and Santosh have co-authored at least 15 papers together in multiple journals, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.
Similarly, Shaji edited at least 10 of Santosh’s articles in Geoscience Frontiers from 2017 to 2024. The two were co-authors on at least 29 papers from 2016 to 2023 in different journals, according to Web of Science.
Desmococcus has flagged many other papers by Santosh in Geoscience Frontiers on PubPeer.
Beyond Geoscience Frontiers, Desmococcus has chronicled similar instances of Santosh’s frequent co-authors editing his papers at other journals, as reported by For Better Science.
In one incident, a report from the 5GH Foundation, a China-based “non-profit organization for promoting science and technology,” alleged Santosh had initially been listed as the handling editor of his own paper at Geoscience Frontiers. The paper now lists Chakravadhanula Manikyamba, a researcher at the National Geophysical Research Institute, as handling editor (although her name is misspelled as “Manikyabma”).
Manikyamba is another frequent editor of Santosh’s articles in Geoscience Frontiers, as Desmococcus points out on PubPeer. She edited at least four of his papers and has co-authored three papers with him since 2022, according to Web of Science.
Santosh’s record also includes a retraction. In 2020, his paper “Hydrocarbon reserves of the south China sea: Implications for regional energy security” was removed “because it inadvertently included unlawful content.” The editor-in-chief of the journal where it appeared, Energy Geoscience, did not respond to our request for clarity on what constitutes “unlawful content,” but an Elsevier spokesperson told us that the authors requested the removal “because they had inadvertently breached legal regulations.”
Elsevier’s website states it will remove an article only in “extremely limited number of cases,” in which the article is “defamatory, or infringes others’ legal rights, and retraction is not a sufficient remedy.” An article will also be removed if Elsevier “has good reason to expect it will be” the subject of a court order, or if it would pose a “serious health risk” if acted upon.
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