On Feb. 18, 2026, a researcher in Italy sent a disgruntled email to the editorial board of a Wiley tourism journal. Salvatore Bimonte had waited more than a year for his manuscript to be peer-reviewed, he complained, and then months more while the editor-in-chief was “actively working on” the revised version Bimonte submitted. When Bimonte’s paper was finally rejected after 18 months – for reasons such as the topic not being “highly suitable” and the work not being submitted in the form of a case study — the researcher felt compelled to vent his frustration to the entire editorial board of the International Journal of Tourism Research (IJTR). “Maybe, I would have been treated better if I had cited some of the editor in chief’s papers,” Bimonte wrote.

A Retraction Watch analysis of data from Clarivate’s Web of Science shows that of the 186 papers the IJTR published in 2024, 134, or nearly three-fourths, cited Timothy J. Lee’s (EIC of IJTR) work, often multiple times. The editor’s outsize influence continued through 2025 and has held up so far this year as well. Excluding self-citations, a total of 55% of the papers published in IJTR from 2024 until today contain references to Lee’s research.

Source https://retractionwatch.com/2026/02/26/exclusive-unrest-at-wiley-journal-whose-eic-is-cited-in-more-than-half-of-its-papers/

Another high-profile case has interested scientists. Read now