Since June, 2026 the Elsevier’s International Journal of Biological Macromolecules has retracted 120 papers. According to the retraction notices, the journal identified "[s]ystematic, coordinated, and widespread manipulation of the peer-review process."

A spokesperson for Elsevier told that the publisher "became aware of possible systematic manipulation and other issues such as plagiarism, image duplication, and authorship issues in a number of articles published in Special Issues" in 2025, which led them to conduct a wider investigation into more recent special issues. Nearly all of the retracted papers had authors with affiliations in China and were published in 2024 and 2025.

Guest-edited special issues appear to be particularly vulnerable to manipulation. Amid its retraction of more than 10,000 papers between late 2022 and early 2024, Hindawi temporarily suspended publishing special issues in 2023 because of manipulated peer review. In 2024, a Springer Nature journal retracted 34 papers from special issues for "compromised editorial handling and peer review process."
 

Source https://retractionwatch.com/2026/08/12/biology-journal-pulls-100-articles-and-counting-from-special-issues-for-peer-review-manipulation/

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