The journalSouth African Journal of Botany, title Elsevier, has pulled three articles after the publisher determined an author, botany researcher Vijay Kumar of Lovely Professional University in Punjab, India, had been "involved in the peer review and decision making" as managing guest editor of the special issues in which they appeared.
In August 2023, an anonymous user posted a screenshot of the 2020 paper on PubPeer that listed Kumar as both an author and editor of the article. A commenter with a different username posted about the other papers the following August.
Elsevier retracted the 2020 article in October 2024, and pulled the other two in January 2025. The retraction notices for each article are nearly identical. They state: "This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief as the reliability of the peer-review process of the article cannot be guaranteed." The author said that his apparent involvement in assigning reviewers was "purely unintentional and a foolish mistake".
