Dozens of Elsevier papers retracted over fake companies and suspicious authorship changes

Since March of last year, Elsevier has pulled around 60 papers connected to companies in the Caucasus region that don’t seem to exist. The retraction notices attribute the decision to suspicious changes in authorship and the authors being unable to verify the existence of their employers. Online sleuths have also flagged potentially manipulated citations among the articles. 

Each of the retracted papers appears to follow an identical pattern, based on the details given in the retraction notices. First, a solo author submits a paper and claims to be affiliated with a company that doesn’t appear in any business registries. During the revision process, the author adds several other authors to the paper — including new first and corresponding authors, despite no clear contribution to the original work. This behavior is typical of paper mills and authorship-for-sale schemes. 

When asked by the editors, the original authors are unable to explain why they added the additional authors, nor validate the “nature” or “existence” of the companies they were claiming an affiliation with, according to the retraction notices. 

 The papers linked to these companies seem to be largely published in Elsevier journals, with a few exceptions. A spokesperson for the publisher said they discovered “unauthorized authorship changes” during the review process, and began an investigation into the articles. The press office has not responded to follow-up questions about why the papers were published if they were being investigated in the review stage. 

Elsevier does allow authors to be added during the revision process, under certain conditions. According to a December 2024 guide, any changes to authorship before a paper is accepted should be approved by the editor and accompanied by a written explanation. The guide states authors are “now required” to submit a form for editorial consideration to change authorship, but when that form became a requirement is unclear. 

Dozens of papers are linked to ‘Sun-life’ or ‘Sunlife’ company, and in one instance “Sun-light.” The company is purportedly headquartered in Baku, Azerbaijan, although one article bases it in Bangkok, Thailand. Several authors claim to be affiliated with the departments of electrical engineering, solar energy, or stomatology – a field related to dentistry. 

Neither business name appears to be on any Azerbaijani corporate listings, but a website for the company briefly appeared online. A domain was registered in March 2024, around the time that ‘For Better Science’ began raising questions about the papers, and of the first retractions. 

The website’s meta description says the company is a “leading force” in the renewable energy sector, and that it was founded in 2015. But the domain status is pending delete, meaning whoever owns the domain has not renewed the purchase, and the link no longer seems to connect to any content. An archived snapshot of the website shows a paragraph referring to an American non-profit organization that’s unrelated to Sunlife. 

A similar pattern appears with “Arian company,” claiming to be based in Yerevan, Armenia. That name can be found among legitimate Armenian businesses, but they are hospitality or jewelry businesses, not ones involved in scientific research. In one case, a submitting author named Ashk Fars claimed an affiliation with Sunlife in Azerbaijan in 2021, and then to Arian company in Armenia in 2023 as well as “Yerevn Company” the same year. No contact information or online presence could be found for Fars. 

Alexander Magazinov, a Kazakhstan-based software engineer known for uncovering suspicious papers, has looked into these companies, commenting on dozens of the articles on PubPeer highlighting the fake affiliations. While Magazinov said the first retraction was independent of his findings, he later contacted Elsevier about the papers linked to Arian Company, prompting the publisher to ask him for evidence the company was fake. 

In his research, he has spotted another affiliation he presumes to be fake: “Solar Energy and Power Electronic Co.,” which claims to be based in Japan but is also listed in cities across Turkey and in Germany. None of these papers have been retracted. 

Nasrin Eghbalian appears at least five times as the submitting author and was the only person affiliated with the ghost companies who had a listed email address. In February 2024, Eghbalian responded to a PubPeer inquiry about the nature of Sunlife. He claimed the company is active in research projects and renewable energy projects, but that it had stopped operating, even though the company’s website was registered a month after his comment: 

The research activity of this company is closed and we are not be able to contact with the related manager. We used the valid affiliation due to the collaboration with this company. Now, if there is serious concern about this affiliation, please remove it. Regards, Authors

When asked for proof of the company’s existence, Eghbalian declined to provide proof publicly: 

As you know the employees in a private company doesn’t have accessibility for the company details. To solve the mentioned problem, I have contacted with all managers in the company who I was familiar with them. Fortunately, I get some information from this company. But, to have more details, I can not send them in public pages. Please send me your email for further communications and clarifications. 

Eghbalian did not respond to a request for comment to the listed email address, and doesn’t appear to have a verifiable online presence. Nor do any of the other authors who had initially submitted the papers. 

The authors added to the papers during the revision stage are affiliated with institutions in China. Nearly all of these authors’ names appear just once among all the retracted papers, whereas the authors who initially submitted the work published several papers each. None of the new corresponding authors have responded to a request for comment. 

Retraction Watch has written about some of the journals that published papers from with the sham company affiliations. At least eight papers appear in the Journal of Cleaner Production, which has previously been flagged for large numbers of self-citations. At least nine of the papers appear in the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, which has come under scrutiny for publishing papers with fake peer reviews. 

Apart from authorship concerns, one PubPeer commenter mentioned possibly manufactured citations. Many of the retracted papers cite Oveis Abedinia from the Zenith Sustainable Energy Institute in Iran. In an email to Retraction Watch, Abedinia asked us not to name him in this story and wrote: 

I have no connection to the authors or the journals involved, and I was not aware of these papers citing my work. I have never used or supported any citation-increasing services, and I strongly oppose any unethical citation practices.

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