Who Snubs and Who Gets Snubbed?

Snub publishing (SP), a novel term coined in early 2013, is defined as “the intentional or unintentional omission of important references in a scientific paper, the erroneous or deliberate manipulation of a name such that it becomes distorted in the literature, or the removal of a name from a manuscript’s author’s list” [1].

This paper deals with 26 case studies of the former two situations, all directly related to Anthurium, an important ornamental plant. Anthurium was selected due to the personal involvement of the author with this plant and due to the relatively limited literature that exists on this plant, approximately 150 papers in total until 2013 in any available data-base. The first place for scientists to initiate a search of the literature when starting to write a paper (and in fact earlier when researching the literature regarding their experimental design) would be public data-bases such as Google Scholar, Yahoo, or in publisher’s data-bases such as Elsevier’s Sciencedirect, Springer’s SpringerLink, Taylor and Francis/Informa, or Wiley-Blackwell’s Wiley Online, NIH’s PubMed, among others. If one were to enter the terms “anthurium” and “Teixeira da Silva”, the author’s family name, into these data-bases, one would come across several papers published by the author and his collaborators [i.e., 2–7]. The first two papers [2, 3] are available as open access PDF files and are readily downloadable from the first page of a Yahoo or Google search. The remaining Winarto papers [4–7] are prominently visible on Elsevier and Springer data-bases. In other words, these papers are highly visible and easily accessible, much more than in fact many other anthurium papers. In these data-bases, the family name, Teixeira da Silva, is clear. The anthurium in vitro and micropropagation literature between 2006 and 2013 encompasses (excluding the papers listed above) approximately 34 papers for Anthurium andreanum Hort. and 5 papers for other Anthurium spp. Usually, with such a limited literature, scientists would search the literature carefully to obtain as much information as possible to develop the Introduction and Discussion of a manuscript, at least in theory. Oddly, the name Teixeira da Silva, when crossed with the terms “anthurium”, and “in vitro” or “micropropagation” on the above indicated data-bases does not link to the 26 papers published between 2006 and 2013 while only eight did. This oddity spurred an informal investigation that led to the findings of this paper. Upon closer examination of the 26 papers, listed next as Cases 1–26, each with their own screenshot(s) represented by Figs. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 and 26, respectively, it is abundantly evident that the authors of these 26 papers have misrepresented the name of the author, reducing it to Silva JA, Silva JAT, or other even more indescribable forms, or errors. In essence, each error represents a professional snub. Next listed are the authors, the country of origin and the figure number.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Screenshots of case 1 snub publishing. 4 cases of errors with name. Failure to indicate other Winarto references

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Fig. 2
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Screenshots of case 2 snub publishing. 5 cases of errors with name (2012a, b). Failure to indicate any Winarto references (2012a, b)

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Fig. 3
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Screenshots of case 3 snub publishing. Failure to indicate any Teixeira da Silva, Viegas or Winarto references. Referencing an almost totally unrelated paper

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Fig. 4
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Screenshots of case 4 snub publishing. 2 cases of errors with name. Failure to indicate Viegas or any Winarto references

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Fig. 5
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Screenshots of case 5 snub publishing. One case of error with name. Failure to indicate any Winarto references

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Fig. 6
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Screenshots of case 6 snub publishing. One case of error with name. Failure to indicate any other Winarto references or TdS 2005 or Viegas references

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Fig. 7
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Screenshot of case 7 snub publishing. Failure to indicate Winarto 2011b reference

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Fig. 8
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Screenshot of case 8 snub publishing. Failure to indicate TdS 2005, Viegas Winarto 2010–2012 references. Last reference in reference list indicated

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Fig. 9
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Screenshot of case 9 snub publishing. Failure to indicate TdS 2005, Viegas or any 2010/2011 Winarto reference

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Fig. 10
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Screenshot of case 10 snub publishing. Failure to indicate TdS 2005, Viegas or Winarto 2011b reference

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Fig. 11
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Screenshot of case 11 snub publishing. Failure to indicate TdS 2005, Viegas or Winarto 2010 + 2011 references

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Fig. 12
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Screenshots of case 12 snub publishing. Failure to indicate TdS 2005 reference

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Fig. 13
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Screenshots of case 13 snub publishing. One case of error with name. Failure to indicate TdS 2005 reference

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Fig. 14
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Screenshots of case 14 snub publishing. Failure to indicate TdS 2005 or Viegas references

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Fig. 15
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Screenshots of case 15 snub publishing. One case of error with name. Failure to indicate Viegas reference

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Fig. 16
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Screenshots of case 16 snub publishing. Failure to indicate TdS 2005 or Viegas references. Teng (1997) is last reference in the list

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Fig. 17
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Screenshots of case 17 snub publishing. Failure to indicate TdS 2005 or Viegas references

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Fig. 18
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Screenshots of case 18 snub publishing. Failure to indicate TdS 2005 or Viegas references

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Fig. 19
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Screenshots of case 19 snub publishing. Failure to indicate TdS 2005 or Viegas references

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Fig. 20
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Screenshot of case 20 snub publishing. Failure to indicate TdS 2005 or Viegas references

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Fig. 21
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Screenshots of case 21 snub publishing. Failure to indicate TdS 2005 or Viegas references

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Fig. 22
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Screenshots of case 22 snub publishing. Failure to indicate TdS 2005 or Viegas references. Last reference in reference list indicated

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Fig. 23
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Screenshots of case 23 snub publishing. Failure to indicate TdS 2005 or Viegas references

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Fig. 24
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Screenshots of case 24 snub publishing. Failure to indicate TdS 2005 reference

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Fig. 25
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Screenshots of case 25 snub publishing. Failure to indicate TdS 2005 reference. Last reference in reference list indicated

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Fig. 26
figure 26

Screenshots of case 26 snub publishing. Failure to indicate TdS 2005 reference. Last reference in reference list indicated

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  • Case 1: Atak and Çelik [8] Turkey (Fig. 1).

  • Case 2: Raad et al. [9] Iran (Fig. 2).

  • Case 3: Gantait et al. [10] India (Fig. 3).

  • Case 4: Farsi et al. [11] Iran (Fig. 4).

  • Case 5: Pinto de Carvalho et al. [12] Brazil (Fig. 5).

  • Case 6: Ancy et al. [13] India (Fig. 6).

  • Case 7: Bliss and Suzuki [14] USA (Fig. 7).

  • Case 8: Reddy and Bopaiah [15] India (Fig. 8).

  • Case 9: Sedaghati et al. [16] Indonesia (Fig. 9).

  • Case 10: Gantait and Sinniah [17] India (Fig. 10).

  • Case 11: Kumari et al. [18] India (Fig. 11).

  • Case 12: Gantait and Mandal [19] India (Fig. 12).

  • Case 13: Harb et al. [20] Egypt (Fig. 13).

  • Case 14: Islam et al. [21] Bangladesh (Fig. 14).

  • Case 15: Atak and Çelik [22] Turkey (Fig. 15).

  • Case 16: Jahan et al. [23] Bangladesh (Fig. 16).

  • Case 17: Kurnianingsih et al. [24] Indonesia (Fig. 17).

  • Case 18: Liendo and Mogollón [25] Venezuela (Fig. 18).

  • Case 19: Yu et al. [26] China (Fig. 19).

  • Case 20: Bejoy et al. [27] India (Fig. 20).

  • Case 21: Beyramizade et al. [28] Iran/Japan (Fig. 21).

  • Case 22: Gantait et al. [29] India (Fig. 22).

  • Case 23: del Rivero-Bautista et al. [30] Cuba/Mexico (Fig. 23).

  • Case 24: Lima et al. [31] Brazil (Fig. 24).

  • Case 25: Nhut et al. [32] Vietnam (Fig. 25).

  • Case 26: Te-chato et al. [33] Thailand (Fig. 26).

Only studies from 2006 were considered since the objective was to assess which papers after the author’s earliest study [2] had been snubbing his identity. In every single case, two clear aspects are obvious. Firstly, there has been author negligence in not ensuring that the name of the author of the study that they were referencing was correct. Even so, an astute scientist would easily be able to identify the family name from the published paper and represent it faithfully in their text and reference list. There may be some cultural bias since in most of these cases, the most frequent being from Indian scientists (31 % of all cases), a cultural ignorance of global scientists’ names may exist. The fact that 26 papers by scientists from 15 countries misrepresented my professional name in the literature is of great concern and shows just how wide-spread snub publishing may be taking place. The second glaring aspect that is revealed by this error in the incorrect or fraudulent representation of my professional name is the serious level of editorial oversight and possibly inadequate or biased peer review. Peer reviewers and editors have the responsibility to ensure the scientific integrity of a manuscript, to ensure that the information contained therein is accurate and correct, including the name of authors and peers in that field of study. This is also a basic requirement of authors [34]. When submitting to a journal that would be reviewing a paper on anthurium, one would expect that an anthurium specialist would be revising the manuscript. An anthurium specialist or even ornamental scientist who is familiar with this literature would undoubtedly have identified that my name had been incorrectly represented and would have then requested the authors to correct the record. The fact that 26 papers failed to detect such a basic error provides evidence that no, fake, unprofessional or incomplete peer review took place. Such a pseudo-peer review would essentially render the scientific quality and integrity of the paper invalid since it would run counter to what all these journals are advertising, i.e., that they are peer reviewed international journals. A non-peer reviewed or poorly peer reviewed paper should, very plainly stated, never have been published. According to [1], all of these 26 papers would receive a snub score of 2–3 on a scale of 1–8, according to Table 1 in that paper. Moreover, the existence of snub publishing is one characteristic of predatory open access publishers [35].

What are the consequences of snub publishing? The very first and most obvious one is that the snubbed scientist, in this case the author as an example, will have lost 26 opportunities to be referenced accurately in the literature. Potentially, this could translate into 26 opportunities for indexing in data-bases and thus the potential loss of dozens of valid literature attributions over the past 8 years. For a scientist, one of the most important aspects is for their work to be referenced. But if their names are not being accurately or correctly referenced, then what is the purpose of even being referenced, or even publishing for that matter when the peer pool appears to act irresponsibly? The second unintentional but direct consequence is that any researcher from now on (2014-future) who reads any of these snub papers will potentially carry forward the fraud (claimed so because information is falsely represented) into the future literature and its reference lists, especially if the authors of as-yet-to-be published papers do not bother to access the original source. The risk of professional damage thus becomes not linear, but exponential. In this case, we are referring to a plant with limited research (average of between 5 and 10 papers yearly in the global literature), but the dimension of the damage caused were the plant to be tomato, maize, wheat or another major crop, could be devastating to a career and a curriculum vitae.

Why would such false and fraudulent representation of an author’s name not be considered libel? Why would the authors not be held accountable for correcting the literature? Why would the editors, journals and publishers not be held accountable and be made to publish errata to set the academic record straight? In cases where an author feels that their name has been snubbed, and that their name is not correctly represented in the literature, they should have the right to request the publisher to correct the scientific record and to publish an erratum.

SP is one form of predatory publishing, but in which the act of predation might be used by the author, using a journal or publisher in an unsuspecting manner, to derive benefit in a dishonest or fraudulent way, or to inflict damage to the professional status or image of another scientist, possibly a competitor. SP can be subtle, or can be blatant. This paper shows one case of how SP takes place in both veiled and blunt forms.

Conclusions

The acts that define SP have most likely always been present throughout the history of publishing. Yet, the fact that a concrete term to this phenomenon has now been assigned, and somewhat qualified in this paper, brings to light a new form of fraud in science publishing that deserves greater scrutiny. Other scientists are urged to examine the text and reference lists of their own papers within fields of science that they are specialists of to begin to quantify the level of SP that is taking place in the open access and print literature. References suddenly become a form by which fraud is permitted, legalized and perpetuated. The legitimization of false and inaccurate information through SP by predatory publishers, by ignorant or lazy authors, or by careless editors, peers and journals must not be allowed to continue unpunished, otherwise there will be no sense of justice and correction of the scientific record for posterity [36].

Regrettably, when data and figure duplication (partial or total)—for example, [9] and [37] or [28] and [38]—are allowed to remain published without any action by the authors, publishers or peer community, in this case the anthurium, horticultural and plant science communities, or without any repercussions, these very same communities should not be surprised when the system of ethical publishing implodes once total failure in quality control has been lost. In such cases, quality control must be implemented by scientists and the peer pool in an independent analysis, using one key tool, post-publication peer review [39].

Napoleon Bonaparte once stated “Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence”, which may be pertinent to the topic at hand. However, whether errors in the literature are introduced via malice or via incompetence does not remove the fact that they remain errors in the literature and that they should be corrected.