Questions on reviewing standards as editor retires
Nature's 27 November issue (456, 432; 2008) carries a News story about the planned retirement of the editor of a theoretical-physics journal, who was facing growing criticism that he used its pages to publish numerous papers written by himself.
According to Nature, 5 of the 36 papers in the December issue of Chaos, Solitons and Fractals alone were written by its editor-in-chief, Mohamed El Naschie, making nearly 60 papers written or coauthored by him in the journal this year. Most scientists contacted by Nature said that El Naschie's papers tend to be of poor quality, although a few find his ideas original and interesting.
From the news story: "El Naschie, who was born in Cairo and now splits his time between England and Germany, rejects any charges of sloppy peer review. "Our papers are reviewed in the normal way expected from a scientific international journal published by a reputable international publisher," he told Nature in an e-mail signed by P. Cooper, who claimed to be a spokesperson for the editorial board of Chaos, Solitons and Fractals. Elsevier, which publishes the journal, is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics, which holds that good editors "ensure that all published reports of research have been reviewed by suitably qualified reviewers".
On 25 November, Elsevier's director of corporate relations, Shira Tabachnikoff, wrote an e-mail to Nature saying: "Dr El Naschie's retirement as Editor-in-Chief of Chaos, Solitons and Fractals will be announced to readers in the first issue of 2009. Elsevier and Dr El Naschie have been in discussion for quite some time about the details of his retirement and the transitional arrangement for papers under review."
In a separate e-mail Tabachnikoff wrote: "[We are] committed to supporting our editors in maintaining high standards for both the editorial and peer-review process. At times there may be discussions about particular scientific issues and fields, even at the level of individual editorial decisions. That is a part of the normal process of scientific publishing." "
In an online comment to the Nature news story, Thomas Dent remarks, "It would be interesting to issue a call in the world of mathematical physics for anyone who will admit to having been the referee for any published paper of El Naschie in the last - say - 20 years."
