Springer, BMC retracting nearly 60 papers for fake reviews and other issues

Retraction Watch
 November 1, 2016

 In a massive cleanup, Springer and BioMed Central announced today they are retracting 58 papers for several reasons, including manipulation of the peer-review process and inappropriately allocating authorship.
The papers appeared in seven journals, and more are under investigation.
In a release issued today, the publishers note:

After receiving allegations of plagiarism confined to two journals, we immediately commenced an extensive investigation across our entire portfolio. In doing so, two teams dedicated to investigating issues around research integrity, the Research Integrity Group at BioMed Central and the Springer Ethics Team, identified a group of papers across seven journals that raised concerns relating to a variety of issues.
BioMed Central has identified 28 articles that will be retracted and is investigating 40 more articles. Springer has identified 30 articles that will be retracted, with a further 9 articles that need further investigation.....

Click here for a full list of papers. The most affected journals are Tumor Biology (25 papers) and Diagnostic Pathology (23 papers). The other journals are Comparative Clinical Pathology (one paper), Journal of Parasitic Diseases (four papers), Cancer Cell International (two papers), Journal of Ovarian Research (two papers), and World Journal of Surgical Oncology (one paper).
This is not the first time the journals have done a massive sweep to clean up the literature — in March, 2015, BMC pulled 43 papers for fake reviews; a few months later, in August, Springer did the same for 64 papers.