Curious Responses from Cureus
Five obvious questions about papers accepted in a rush and then retracted generate an odd response
After my analysis last week showed that more than half of the recent 56 retractions from the journal Cureus were of papers accepted on the same day or the next day after review commenced — a clear deviation of peer-review standards for Cureus itself, not to mention the peer-review process writ large — I asked John Adler, one of the founding co-Editors-in-Chief, the following questions via email:
- Was Cureus or anyone associated with it paid in any way related to these articles?
- Does anyone at the journal have a relationship with the institution behind the papers, or anyone affiliated with it?
- Who handled the batch of papers?
- Were you and/or your co-EIC aware of these papers as they were processed?
- Has anyone at Cureus suffered any consequences for allowing these papers to get through with scant review?