A journal put Laertis Ikonomou's name on a paper he never wrote, then tried to charge him 499 euros to take it down. Ikonomou teaches at the University of Buffalo. Last September, he found his name attached to a commentary in the Journal of Carcinogenesis & Mutagenesis, published by Walsh Medical Media. He'd never seen the paper, let alone written it.
When he asked the journal to remove his name, a rep named "Dwayne Harrison" emailed back with a price tag — first 400 euros, then a typo- and grammar-ridden "Atleast try to make 499 Euros will remove the article from the website," according to Retraction Watch.
Ikonomou refused to pay. So the journal swapped his name for "Teresa Partmans" from the Hospital del Mar Research Institute in Barcelona. Nobody by that name works there, and the listed email address bounced.
Rui Amaral Mendes, listed as a co-editor-in-chief, told Ikonomou that he'd never actually worked with the journal — his name appeared on the masthead "against my will," and he'd been trying to get it removed since 2020. Walsh Medical Media publishes 77 journals and claims an impact factor of 3.02 for this one, despite not being indexed by Clarivate's Web of Science. None of Walsh's journals appear in Scopus.
The publisher is flagged in Cabells' Predatory Reports and has ties to OMICS — the publishing outfit that a federal court hit with a $50 million judgment in 2019 for deceptive practices.
"There may be a widespread pattern of researcher name misuse by this predatory publisher," Ikonomou said.
Previously:
