Synthesis and Reactivity in Inorganic, Metal-Organic, and Nano-Metal Chemistry is retracting three articles for duplication — redundancy the authors, chemical engineers at Islamic Azad University, in Shahreza, Iran, appear to have gotten around by reviewing their own manuscripts. But, if they did say so themselves, those papers were really something!

Here’s the retraction notice for two of the papers, both of which appeared in 2012 and which were cited seven times and once, respectively, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge:



We, the Editor and Publisher of Synthesis and Reactivity in Inorganic, Metal-Organic, and Nano-Metal Chemistry, are retracting the following articles on the grounds of redundant publication: Bahram Mokhtari and Kobra Pourabdollah, “Emulsion Liquid Membranes for Effective Inclusion Extraction of Alkali Metals by Nanobaskets of Calixarene” Synthesis and Reactivity in Inorganic, Metal-Organic, and Nano-Metal Chemistry 42.7 (2012): 1013-1021. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15533174.2012.654879 Bahram Mokhtari and Kobra Pourabdollah, “Electrochemical Study of Structural Effects in Complexation of Nano-baskets: Calix[4]-1,2-crown-3, -crown-4, -crown-5, -crown-6” Synthesis and Reactivity in Inorganic, Metal-Organic, and Nano-Metal Chemistry 42.8 (2012): 1091-1097. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15533174.2012.680131 We are now cognizant that the authors have reused and republished content from the aforementioned articles in Desalination: The International Journal on the Science and Technology of Desalting and Water Purification (Print ISSN: 0011-9164; Online ISSN: 1873-4464) and Talanta: The International Journal of Pure and Applied Analytical Chemistry (Print ISSN: 0039-9140; Online ISSN: 1873-3573) without adequate acknowledgement. We have also ascertained that the aforementioned manuscripts were self-reviewed by the authors. These actions constitute a breach of warranties made by the authors prior to publication. We note we published these articles in good faith based on these warranties, and censure these actions. The retracted articles will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but they will be digitally watermarked on each page as RETRACTED.

The third article, “Synthesis and Evaluation of an Organometallic pH-Responsive Nanocomposite,” has a similar, but somewhat more amusing, statement: We, the Editor and Publisher of Synthesis and Reactivity in Inorganic, Metal-Organic, and Nano-Metal Chemistry, are retracting the following article due to a lack of reviewer objectivity throughout the peer review process: Bahram Mokhtari and Kobra Pourabdollah, “Synthesis and Evaluation of an Organometallic pH-Responsive Nanocomposite” Synthesis and Reactivity in Inorganic, Metal-Organic, and Nano-Metal Chemistry 43.5 (2013): 588–593. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15533174.2012.751422 We are now cognizant that the authors self-reviewed the manuscript during the peer review process. This action constitutes an ethical breach of warranties made by the authors. We note we published the article in good faith based on these warranties, and censure this action. The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as RETRACTED. As bizarre as it sounds, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen cases of authors duping journals to review their own papers. About a year ago, we reported on the case of Hyung-In Moon, who would end up retracting 28 papers because he peer reviewed them himself. Moon’s method was to create fake email addresses for known luminaries so that the review requests would go straight to him. We’re not sure how these authors in Iran accomplished the feat, but we’ve tried to contact the journal’s editor and will update with anything we learn.

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