Protein journal retracts mystery paper that plagiarized phantom article

Protein & Peptide Letters, a Bentham title, has retracted a paper for plagiarism, but it’s the unhelpful — bordering on insulting — notice that caught our eye.

The abstract for the notice, the rest of which  sits behind a $63.10 (plus tax) pay wall on Ingenta Connect, reads:

As per Bentham Science’s policy, the following article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief and its Authors published in `Protein & Peptide Letters“ due to their use of text obtained from another paper published in the Biochemical Journal.

Oh, my. Where to begin…

Would you pay $63 for a retraction notice?

For $63 plus tax, you can have a single steak with a side order of fried potatoes and a wedge of crisp iceberg lettuce at the famed Peter Luger steakhouse in Brooklyn. Or you can get a peek at one measly retraction notice from Bentham Science Publishers (at least it’s BYOB).

To be fair, the publisher, based in the United Arab Emirates, does offer a free version of the notice on its own website. But Bentham uses the company Ingenta Connect as a go-between to collect fees —  some of which reach $100 per article, according to a company employee — and as far as we can tell, no such gratis access is available through the middleman. Neither does Ingenta direct readers to the free version in its landing page for the notice.

The article in question, “Solubilization and Amorphization of Non Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug with Low Molecular Weight Chitosan for a New Guar-Based Colon Delivery Formulation,” by Kadria A. Elkhodairy, Nahla S. Barakat and Fars K. Alanazi, appeared in the March 2011 issue of Letters in Drug Design & Discovery. The retraction notice reads: