A newly appointed dean at the University of Guelph in Canada has had two papers retracted for "evidence of authorship manipulation." Last year, two Elsevier journals retracted articles on which Nehdi was the corresponding author.
The notice for "Mechanical, thermal, durability and microstructural behavior of hybrid waste-modified green reactive powder concrete," originally published in Construction and Building Materials in August 2022, continued: "Changes in authorship were made to the paper during the review and revision process, in contravention of the journal policies on authorship changes." The other retracted article, "Alkali-activated fly ash concrete with untreated coal aggregate: Fresh- and hardened state properties," appeared in Case Studies in Construction Materials in December 2022. "Seven co-authors were added to the paper during the review and revision process, in contravention of the journal policies on authorship changes," according to the notice.
In September, scientific sleuth Nick Wise posted a comment on PubPeer about another of Nehdi’s articles: "On the 1st of January 2022 an advert was placed on an Iranian Telegram channel offering authorship of a paper. The keywords are a match to this paper."
