What did Ho Chi Minh City University of Economics conclude about the scientist's international article being removed?

Prof. Dr. Vo Xuan Vinh is the 5th author out of 9 authors of the article that was recently removed by an international journal - Photo: Facebook character

Speaking with Tuoi Tre Online on the afternoon of May 10, Dr. Dinh Cong Khai - Deputy Director of UEH, said that regarding the fact that Prof. Dr. Vo Xuan Vinh was involved in a scientific article in the Environmental Science and Pollution Research Journal under Springer Publishing House that was removed, the school had a meeting, clarified and had a conclusion record for the incident from March 2024.

The research team's paper was officially published online on April 13, 2021, and the scientific journal removed it on March 14, 2024, for containing several tortured phrases, including in the title.

This article belongs to a group of articles reviewed by guest editors that were surveyed and reviewed by the magazine. Professor Vo Xuan Vinh, affiliated with the UEH Institute of Business Research, is the 5th author out of 9 authors of the work.

What did Mr. Vo Xuan Vinh explain?

According to Mr. Khai, UEH worked and recorded the minutes, handling the case with Professor Vinh on March 27. At the meeting, Mr. Vinh reported and provided the necessary evidence.

Accordingly, immediately after discovering his name was misused, Mr. Vinh proactively contacted the magazine's editor-in-chief on February 15, one month before the article was removed.

In the letter, Mr. Vinh affirmed that he had nothing to do with the article, the article submission process, and did not agree with and did not allow his name to be listed as the author of the article. Mr. Vinh requested the magazine to remove his name from the article.

On March 21, Mr. Vinh received a reply email from the editor-in-chief of the magazine stating that author Mohammed Musah had sent a letter to the editor-in-chief confirming that he had arbitrarily included Mr. Vo Xuan Vinh’s name in the article without Mr. Vinh’s consent, and apologized for the incident. The magazine also forwarded this letter to the publisher’s academic integrity department for further action.

Further explaining to the school, among the authors of this article, Mr. Vinh had worked with the first author Mohammed Musah and the second author Yusheng Kong on a Nature Fund project on sustainable development. These two authors were at Jiangsu University, a major university in China.

"Mr. Vinh did not receive any sponsorship or reward from UEH for this article"

After working with Mr. Vinh, UEH had an initial conclusion about the case.

UEH leaders said that with a strict working process, an orientation to frankly acknowledge the mistakes (if any) of individual researchers, and at the same time, not attributing the achievements of the whole process, UEH carefully considered the arguments, evidence and concluded that the article was withdrawn related to the guest editor's handling process and the journal's peer review activities.

"Mr. Vinh personally did not receive any funding/award from the school for this article. Mr. Vinh has also provided evidence of his identity being misused. This is a case of withdrawing a research article related to copyright," Mr. Khai commented.

At the same time, the school said it asked Mr. Vinh to seriously learn from his personal experience in international publication cooperation activities.

In addition, as the director of the Institute of Business Research, Mr. Vinh needs to have a management policy and a strict control mechanism for the unit's extensive network of collaborating research experts based on the rules of the academic integrity council to avoid similar incidents.

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/dai-hoc-kinh-te-tphcm-ket-luan-gi-vu-nha-khoa-hoc-bi-go-bai-bao-quoc-te-20240510184702642.htm