The Strange Rise and Fall of a Medical Journal - Neuroskeptic | DiscoverMagazine.com

"For almost a year, I’ve been blogging about two strange organizations from the world of science, Publication Integrity and Ethics (PIE) and Open Access Publishing London (OAPL). This story went quiet for a while, but now it’s back, with the publication of an extraordinary document called: Evidence-based analysis: The rise and fall of Head and Neck Oncology I : the audit and subsequent investigations. This paper is, to my knowledge, unique in the medical literature. In it, the editor of a medical journal devotes a whole 15 pages to defending his own behavior as editor, and refuting charges of misconduct against him. That editor is Dr Waseem Jerjes and the journal is Head and Neck Oncology (HNO), which publishes research on head and neck cancers.  The story of HNO – as Jerjes tells it – is quite  spicy. Back in July 2012, HNOwas an open-access journal published by BioMed Central (BMC). On 4th July 2012, however, BMC suddenly announced that they’d performed an internal audit and had found evidence of ‘serious editorial misconduct’ at HNO – with Jerjes being, allegedly, the main culprit. Two days later, the publisher asked Jerjes and all three of the other editors-in-chief to step down. Shortly afterwards, BMC stopped publishing HNO – although their archive remains. Why was HNO shut down? Jerjes himself has published BMC’s allegationsas an appendix to his paper. Amongst other charges, the main claim is that Jerjes was accepting papers on his editorial judgement alone, without sending them out for peer review (except that provided by himself). BMC also allege that Jerjes frequently submitted his own work to HNO, and that in many cases, such articles were 'apparently handled by Waseem Jerjes, an author of the article and Editor-in-Chief of the journal at that time. The manuscript was reviewed by one recent co-author of some of the authors and accepted without revision' ... HNO‘s publisher is now OAPL, as we’ve seen.  What Jerjes never mentions, however, is that Open Access Publishing London (UK) Ltd. is a company directed by a Mr Walid Khalid Wadee Jerjes– in other words, by Waseem Jerjes’s relative. A strange coincidence? Stranger still, there is another company called Open Access Publishing London Ltd – with no '(UK)'. This company shares the same address (well, on paper – when I checked last year, the building appeared vacant) as 'OAPL (UK)'. Why two such companies with such similar names were created is a mystery ..."