> Last July, the journal retracted 81 papers from another special issue,
And they learned nothing in the year since, except to try far fewer articles.
Why have "guest-edited issues" if as a rule they are going to undermine the work of their guests?
Obviously they need a period of co-editing before they are willing to trust guest editors.
It sound like the guest editor had some dodgy qualities and peer review was questionable.
The thing that might be bad is having the individual author tarred with a retraction if they had nothing to do with the process. But I don't how academic records are evaluated at this point.
No mention of it, but I suspect AI-generated content may be involved.
Then again, a journal called "Annals of Operations Research" and an article titled "Prescriptive Analytics Using Machine Learning and Mathematical Programming for Sustainable Operations Research" sounds abstract and vague enough that most of the content may be like that.
> An investigation by the publisher found a number of articles, including this one, with a number of concerns, including but not limited to compromised editorial handling and peer review process, inappropriate or irrelevant references or not being in scope of the journal or guest-edited issue.
It's quite a leap to arrive at AI generated content.
It is all speculation, but it sounds more likely the guest editor did not properly handle peer review (not blind, befriended or non-expert reviewer) and/or misapplied submission selection criteria (maybe out of scope papers by friendly colleagues were not rejected).
And they learned nothing in the year since, except to try far fewer articles. Why have "guest-edited issues" if as a rule they are going to undermine the work of their guests?
Obviously they need a period of co-editing before they are willing to trust guest editors.
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