Transparency only from authors? Insights from 'mysterious' retractions in obstetrics and gynecology

In December 2025, the peer-reviewed open access PLoS ONE journal retracted 10 papers in the area of Obstetrics and Gynecology with the motivation of ‘ concerns about compromised peer review’ based on the retraction notes [ 1 ]. One of the authors of the present manuscript was a co-author of one of the retracted papers [ 2 ]. According to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines [ 3 ], retraction of a paper is a mechanism for correcting the literature and alerting readers to articles that have such seriously flawed or erroneous content or data that their findings and conclusions cannot be relied upon . Among the reasons for retraction, COPE indeed included the situation in which the peer review or publication process is compromised for e.g. , fake reviewers , paper mill use , or citation manipulation . COPE also reported that authors should be informed on why (i) the editor decided to investigate their article , (ii) what caused the editor to lose confidence in the article , (iii) and why that concern cannot be resolved by a correction. Since this information was not provided by PLoS ONE’s Editors neither in their decision letter to the authors nor in the retraction note, the authors of the retracted paper from our group, while acknowledging that a compromised peer review was a motive of retraction, requested greater transparency from the Editors. The Editors did not provide further explanations regarding their decision. This poor transparency from the PLoS ONE Editors led to a series of effects in our team: A sense of disorientation. The whole group, after an internal meeting, agreed to conduct an investigation on the web and in the PLoS ONE website which led the authors to assume that the issue was related to a single Academic Editor of the obstetric/gynecologic area who managed almost all the retracted papers. A subsequent simple search in Google allowed to identify a piece in Retraction Watch entitled ‘Review mill in Italy targeting ob-gyn journals, researchers allege’ [ 4 ] focusing on the content of a preprint paper posted on medRxiv on October 23 by Maria Ángeles Oviedo-García, René Aquarius and Dorothy Bishop [ 5 ]. This whistleblowing article identified 195 review reports from a peer review mill, which largely consisted of requests for citations to work authored by the review millers. The plausible reason behind this request was to increase citations and boost the reviewer's H-index, regarded as an indicator of prestige and a way for career advancement. The supplementary materials of the paper by Oviedo-Garcia et al. did name 14 of the reviewers involved in the alleged mills, all well-established, Italian physicians in the fields of gynecology and oncology, mostly affecting papers with clinical implications. These findings clearly point to the emergence of an alarming trend, indicating that the quality of the research literature in this area may be compromised due to failures in the peer-review process. All the potential consequences of the review mill on the scientific evidence and patient safety are well described by Oviedo-Garcia et al. [ 5 ] and are beyond the scope of this paper. On the other hand, while firmly condemning this deplorable behaviour, given the limited information provided by the PLoS ONE ’s Editors, the authors of the retracted paper cannot be entirely certain that the retraction was indeed linked to this specific peer review mill. The situation is further complicated by the fact that, although the Academic Editor common to almost all retractions managed more than 80 articles between 2018 and 2025 (based on PLoS ONE website), only 10 papers have been retracted so far, while other 3 papers received only an Editorial note of caution and other 6 an expression of concern. Potential differences in the peer review process among these articles are unknown. A sense of distrust. The authors of the retracted paper from our group perceived a profound sense of humiliation, especially the emerging ones. According to COPE, the purpose of retraction is to correct the literature and ensure its integrity, not to punish the authors. This should be particularly important when the reason for retraction is unrelated to the authors’ responsibility. A recent study published in Nature Human Behaviour revealed that around 45.9% of authors left their publishing careers around the time of retraction [ 6 ]. Twenty-nine per cent of them leave in the year of retraction. The careers of authors with retracted publications tend to be cut short. Moreover, a retraction can affect an author’s reputation if poorly contextualized, which is indeed what happened for these ‘mysterious’ retractions. Specifically for the younger authors from our group, the damage caused has been substantial. They felt a sense of loss for the many hours of work dedicated to science due to what they perceived as shortcomings, for reasons they were unable to fully understand A sense of injustice. According to the Council of Science Editors, editors are responsible for monitoring and ensuring the fairness, timeliness, thoroughness, and civility of the peer-review editorial process. Ensuring that all involved in the publication process understand that it is inappropriate to manipulate citations is listed as one of the ‘Editor Responsibilities toward Readers and the Scientific Community’ [ 7 ]. If the recent retractions in PLoS ONE are indeed linked to the review mill described by Oviedo-Garcia et al. [ 5 ], it should be noted that the Academic Editor common to almost all retracted papers had been handling articles in the obstetrics/gynecology field since 2018. After all these years, diligent editors of the journal should have recognized warning signs by several indicators of manipulation of the peer review process including vague and generic reviews, requests to add self-citation, and reviewers who agree to review many manuscripts. The Editors of PLoS ONE did not admit any responsibilities in this context, nor they marginally apologised with the authors. On the other hand, the authors of the retracted articles can be hardly blamed for any involvement in the compromised peer review process. As well known by one of the authors of this article who served PLoS ONE as academic editor for some years (P.V.), the assignment of a paper to the Academic Editor is totally managed by the editorial office in an independent manner. In addition to this, the content of the retracted article cannot be submitted elsewhere. Retracted articles remain publicly available, and the underlying data can no longer be published. Any attempt to submit the work would be considered a form of duplicate publication, and editors would inevitably be concerned about a previous unclear retraction. A sense of disorientation. The whole group, after an internal meeting, agreed to conduct an investigation on the web and in the PLoS ONE website which led the authors to assume that the issue was related to a single Academic Editor of the obstetric/gynecologic area who managed almost all the retracted papers. A subsequent simple search in Google allowed to identify a piece in Retraction Watch entitled ‘Review mill in Italy targeting ob-gyn journals, researchers allege’ [ 4 ] focusing on the content of a preprint paper posted on medRxiv on October 23 by Maria Ángeles Oviedo-García, René Aquarius and Dorothy Bishop [ 5 ]. This whistleblowing article identified 195 review reports from a peer review mill, which largely consisted of requests for citations to work authored by the review millers. The plausible reason behind this request was to increase citations and boost the reviewer's H-index, regarded as an indicator of prestige and a way for career advancement. The supplementary materials of the paper by Oviedo-Garcia et al. did name 14 of the reviewers involved in the alleged mills, all well-established, Italian physicians in the fields of gynecology and oncology, mostly affecting papers with clinical implications. These findings clearly point to the emergence of an alarming trend, indicating that the quality of the research literature in this area may be compromised due to failures in the peer-review process. All the potential consequences of the review mill on the scientific evidence and patient safety are well described by Oviedo-Garcia et al. [ 5 ] and are beyond the scope of this paper. On the other hand, while firmly condemning this deplorable behaviour, given the limited information provided by the PLoS ONE ’s Editors, the authors of the retracted paper cannot be entirely certain that the retraction was indeed linked to this specific peer review mill. The situation is further complicated by the fact that, although the Academic Editor common to almost all retractions managed more than 80 articles between 2018 and 2025 (based on PLoS ONE website), only 10 papers have been retracted so far, while other 3 papers received only an Editorial note of caution and other 6 an expression of concern. Potential differences in the peer review process among these articles are unknown. A sense of distrust. The authors of the retracted paper from our group perceived a profound sense of humiliation, especially the emerging ones. According to COPE, the purpose of retraction is to correct the literature and ensure its integrity, not to punish the authors. This should be particularly important when the reason for retraction is unrelated to the authors’ responsibility. A recent study published in Nature Human Behaviour revealed that around 45.9% of authors left their publishing careers around the time of retraction [ 6 ]. Twenty-nine per cent of them leave in the year of retraction. The careers of authors with retracted publications tend to be cut short. Moreover, a retraction can affect an author’s reputation if poorly contextualized, which is indeed what happened for these ‘mysterious’ retractions. Specifically for the younger authors from our group, the damage caused has been substantial. They felt a sense of loss for the many hours of work dedicated to science due to what they perceived as shortcomings, for reasons they were unable to fully understand A sense of injustice. According to the Council of Science Editors, editors are responsible for monitoring and ensuring the fairness, timeliness, thoroughness, and civility of the peer-review editorial process. Ensuring that all involved in the publication process understand that it is inappropriate to manipulate citations is listed as one of the ‘Editor Responsibilities toward Readers and the Scientific Community’ [ 7 ]. If the recent retractions in PLoS ONE are indeed linked to the review mill described by Oviedo-Garcia et al. [ 5 ], it should be noted that the Academic Editor common to almost all retracted papers had been handling articles in the obstetrics/gynecology field since 2018. After all these years, diligent editors of the journal should have recognized warning signs by several indicators of manipulation of the peer review process including vague and generic reviews, requests to add self-citation, and reviewers who agree to review many manuscripts. The Editors of PLoS ONE did not admit any responsibilities in this context, nor they marginally apologised with the authors. On the other hand, the authors of the retracted articles can be hardly blamed for any involvement in the compromised peer review process. As well known by one of the authors of this article who served PLoS ONE as academic editor for some years (P.V.), the assignment of a paper to the Academic Editor is totally managed by the editorial office in an independent manner. In addition to this, the content of the retracted article cannot be submitted elsewhere. Retracted articles remain publicly available, and the underlying data can no longer be published. Any attempt to submit the work would be considered a form of duplicate publication, and editors would inevitably be concerned about a previous unclear retraction. Already in 2016, we had asked more transparency from journals in the peer-review process [ 8 ]. Some medical journals have implemented open peer review, requiring reviewers to sign their reports and providing online access to pre-publication histories of accepted articles. This approach enhances the accountability of editors and reviewers, allows for public scrutiny, and enables readers to understand the basis on which decisions were made and by whom. Here, we once again advocate for increased transparency from journals. Interestingly, in September 2025, Helen Lumbard and Daniel Routledge published an editorial in PloS Medine claiming that data transparency must be reframed not only as a scientific virtue , but as a frontline defence against research misconduct [ 9 ]. They called on authors to prioritize data availability and institutions to invest in infrastructure for data sharing to ensure transparency , reproducibility , and responsible stewardship of research data . Yet, the call for increased transparency cannot be one-sided. If the recent retractions in PLoS ONE are indeed linked to the review mill described by Oviedo-Garcia et al. [ 5 ], we believe that Editors have lost a double opportunity: on one hand to inform the community about their fight against coercive citations in peer revisions and on the other one to promote the idea that, in science, transparency needs to be a useful tool for the entire system, for those who report data and for those who publish data.