Elsevier has pulled a dozen papers by a finance professor in Ireland who oversaw the review of the articles and made “the final decision” to publish them in three journals he edited, according to the retraction notices. The professor, Brian M. Lucey of Trinity College Dublin, and his coauthors disagreed with the retractions.

“I’m not disputing the fact that I made the final decision” to publish the articles, some of which have garnered hundreds of citations, Lucey told. ”What I’m disputing is that that is not prima facie grounds” for retracting them. Because here’s the thing: Elsevier are aware of [editors publishing in their own journals] as a pretty common practice in finance and economics. We’ve given them evidence of hundreds of instances of this. And nothing has happened, which does raise the question, you know, maybe they’re going to go back and go look at all these. Presumably, they will treat everything the same.” Lucey shared his list of such instances. It includes 240 articles, 133 of which are in Science of the Total Environment, which was delisted from Clarivate’s Web of Science in November, 2025.

Source https://retractionwatch.com/2026/01/08/finance-professor-brian-lucey-ireland-elsevier-journals-retractions/

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