As Retraction Watch reported in July, Shafaq Aftab, now a lecturer at the University of Central Punjab in Pakistan, contacted Wiley in September 2024 after discovering a paper published in one of its journals, Systems Research and Behavioral Science (SRBS), was the exact work she submitted to a different journal a year earlier. 

In November 2023, Aftab had submitted her manuscript to Information Development (IDV), which rejected the article after two rounds of revisions. After learning about the SRBS study, Aftab contacted IDV for answers. Stephen Parker, editor of the journal at the time, wrote in a Sept. 22, 2024 email to Aftab that Ghorbanzadeh was a reviewer of both versions of Aftab’s manuscript, and had recommended it be rejected. IDV "cannot be held accountable for this behavior from reviewers", Parker wrote.

The Systems Research and Behavioral Science (SRBS) has retracted a paper more than a year after a researcher reported the work was hers and had been stolen by a reviewer for another journal. The retraction notice, issued October 1, states an investigation found "significant unattributed overlap with an unpublished manuscript" and data the authors provided to the journal were "insufficient to resolve the concerns". Subsequently, "additional scientific errors were identified in the manuscript", according to the notice.

 Source https://retractionwatch.com/2025/10/03/wiley-retracts-study-stolen-by-reviewer-following-retraction-watch-coverage/

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