Reused spectra are observed in the Figure 6 and Figure 7 of the article
The article has 112 reference, a high proportion of 19% (21/112) were authored by a same group from Changchun University of Science and Technology
A friend of ours is about to attend the 'R2R 2025 Conference' in London and has asked us to share some thoughts on 'the future of academic integrity' for the attendees. This is a great opportunity for us to express our stance and the direction we are working towards.
Several references on this article are irrelevant or indirect to the original sources.
The "Journal Quality Index" (JQI) is proposed by the 5GH Foundation to evaluate the quality of academic journals based on the proportion of published articles that are problematic. Problematic articles include those with: (1) Inaccurate or manipulated data, figures, and/or images; (2) Manipulated editorial processes and/or peer review; (3) Other significant issues.
Recently, the 5GH Team analyzed the all 56 articles published on Volume 469 of the journal "Construction and Building Materials", an Elsevier title, and found 12 of them (about 21.4%) have major issues, including reused spectra/images, problematic authorship, abnormal data patterns, as well as abnormal noise patterns of the published spectra. The high percentage of the problematic articles suggests that this journal does not maintain high quality editorial and peer review process. Based on these results, the 5GH Team assigns the Journal Quality Index for "Construction and Building Materials" to be E.
In Figure 6(b) of this article, abnormal backward movements (marked with red arrows) are observed on the time-scale plots.
Recently, the 5GH Team finds two article with questionable authorship, which is suspected to be gift authorship to LIU Baixiong (刘伯雄), a senior professor at Jiangxi University of Science and Technology.
Recently, the 5GH Team analyzed the all 127 articles published on Volume 51 Issue 6 of the journal "Ceramics International", an Elsevier title, and found 14 of them (about 11%) have questionable data, spectra, and/or images, including reused spectra/images, as well as abnormal data/noise patterns. Although these cases were not all resulted from misconducts, the high percentage of the problematic articles suggests that this journal does not maintain high quality editorial and peer review process. Based on these results, the 5GH Team assigns the Journal Quality Index for "Ceramics International" to be E.
Based on information from anonymous sources, the 5GH Team discovered four articles from Xiamen University are coauthored by HU Shengnan (胡圣男, affiliated to Xiamen University) and LI Mengying (李梦颖, affiliated to Hubei University), who are believed to be associated with the Hudiandian Paper Mill. This discovery raises concerns about the authorship of these articles.
