The slow but steady retraction of clinical and pre-clinical studies meant that Sato, Iwamoto and colleagues had their 100th retraction in February 2020, and 4 years later have 133 retractions. However, this still represents a minority of the group’s papers. By early 2020, we had notified journals about 163 publications but still >150 remained unassessed, and the majority of their >300 publications had no indication that there were serious concerns about a very large number of the authors’ publications. We had felt for a long time that the onus should have shifted from those raising concerns about publications to the authors of the remaining publications proving that they were valid and should remain uncorrected. We also thought that it was well past time that the journals and publishers took the reins and undertook a comprehensive quality control process for these publications, instead of relying on the efforts of a small group of academics.
Based on our entire experience to that time (February 2020), we decided to send a spreadsheet documenting each publication, the general concerns that existed for the publication, and the specific concerns arising from the detailed assessments we had performed using the REAPPRAISED checklist to all the journal editors, journal contacts, publisher contacts, and publisher research integrity officers for all the publications by Sato and Iwamoto. Our aim, once again, was to stimulate a co-ordinated response that would hopefully address all the concerns in a single investigation rather than continuing the piecemeal approach imposed by journal/publisher and institutional reticence, whereby assessment would only be considered if an external agent raised detailed concerns about each individual publication. This was exceedingly inefficient, with every journal/publisher (and sometimes the institution) independently investigating every paper. In addition, we hoped that we could connect journals/publishers who had already completed investigations with those who were already undertaking or needed to conduct an investigation. Of the 112 people contacted with a detailed letter explaining the situation and two spreadsheets detailing the publications and the concerns, only 6 people replied (all within 1 month of contact), 3 of whom had already retracted all the relevant papers in their journal, and only 1 sought extra information about a relevant paper. 12 months later two papers had EOCs issued, but otherwise nothing seemed to have occurred.
It was obvious that simultaneous notification of integrity concerns for a body of research work did not elicit coordination of investigations, and was even less effective than painstaking individual notifications and correspondence (although this was very unproductive).
Concerns about publication integrity 