The Science of Science Corner

History The fluid mosaic model is one of the most powerful models depicting a biomembrane and the way how lipids are organized in a bilayer and the way proteins are inserted in or bound to such a bilayer of lipids [1]. Recent developments in this area are nicely reviewed elsewhere [2]. The notion that lipids serve more functions than simple creating a barrier in cells is nicely described in a classic but still relevant review by Dowhan [3]. Basically, the title: “Molecular basis for membrane phospholipid diversity: why are there so many lipids?” says it all. Protein-lipid interactions Numerous processes in biology have been recognized where protein-lipid interactions play a role [4-6]. Please be aware that this only serves as a small impression since this rapidly evolving field produces interesting new papers constantly. Tools to investigate protein-lipid interactions An interesting prediction method has been published that could serve as a tool to create so-called Eisenberg plots [7]....

Here I 'save' some details of a discussion I started in ResearchGate   https://www.researchgate.net/post/Hard_evidence_for_how_RG_is_abused_by_fake_profiles_Artificial_citation_boosting During the investigation of a profile (in the meantime removed)  https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Clementine-Williams  I stumbled on the following advertisement: https://it.fiverr.com/elena__georgiou/increase-google-scholar-citations-by-using-researchgate-and-other-journals See also the following screenshot (in case the website disappears...): and: In other words, RG is used (abused...) to artificially boost citations. So, based selling 'papers' (known as paper mill operations ) some made it into a business model to sell citations (let's call this: citation boosting 'services') see also: all with an overview of the costs of this 'service': She takes some pride in her 'works', if you click (while being on the website) here: then you end up here: see for ano...

In a follow-up of my previous post  https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/7504547925741326964/3379738657311648725  I came across a new example of this kind of scientific misconduct/fraud thanks to the following question in RG   https://www.researchgate.net/post/International_Journal_of_Science_and_Research_Archive_is_it_predatory   I stumbled in the profile of a certain “ Ruchit Parekh ”   https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ruchit-Parekh-4   on the following ‘paper’:     And pretty fast I became aware that this ‘paper’ is an exact copy of the following original:     Just changed the authors, affiliations and title (a little bit) and voila! You have your own paper...not! 😡 Is this a one time event? No, just have a look at: and compare this with the original: What a blunt example of fraud! It is apparently part of an attempt to artificially ‘boost’ citations (with numerous fake profiles in RG, all full of this type of papers and AI ge...

The following case ultimately led to a removal of the profile of this imposter on ResearchGate . The case involved numerous creations of fake papers that ‘just’ copy the template of legit journals and then fabricate a (non-existing) combination of volume, issue nr., page nr. etc.   This leads to a Google Scholar profile like this: Unfortunately the GS profile of this imposter is still there (just search for Onipe Adabenege Yahaya ).   If you look at the second best cited ‘paper’ it is not published in the mentioned journal!  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/362634653_Do_CEOs_influence_earnings_management See the details: And look how bluntly the whole lay-out and fake details like received and accepted dates are generated (by AI ?) that makes it misleadingly real, but it isn’t: It is all even worse since the citations for this fake paper are in most cases (if not all) are from similar type of fake/fabricated papers. See  https://scholar.google.com/scholar?c...

Hijacked journal: a sad example of scientific misconduct   Although the first examples of hijacked journals are found round 2012 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_hijacking  ) the phenomenon of hijacked journals is relatively new. It basically boils down to a type of fraud where imposters ‘clone’ a journal(s) (website) and pretends to be the ( open access ) version of a legit and genuine journal.   One of the first websites that listed identified examples of hijacked journals  https://beallslist.net/hijacked-journals/  described the phenomenon as “Sometimes someone will create a counterfeit website that pretends to be the website of a legitimate scholarly journal. The website creators then solicit manuscript submissions for the hijacked version of the journal, pocketing the money. In some cases, the legitimate versions of the journals are only published in print form, and they may not have websites.”   Nowadays there is an excellent source with (yet)...