The court’s judgment on the true identity of the author responsible for identity fraud and the consequent batch retraction of Iranian’s papers in the journal of diagnostic pathology

TL;DR

A court in Iran investigated and retracted a batch of fraudulent papers after an author's identity was misused without consent.

Contribution

The paper presents a legal and ethical case of academic misconduct and its resolution through judicial action.

Findings

The submitting author was convicted for identity fraud and data forgery.

The court confirmed the misuse of the author's name in submitted manuscripts.

The Cyber Police investigation revealed the true identity of the fraudulent author.

Abstract

This letter concerns retracted papers published in the Journal of Diagnostic Pathology, where my name was misused as the author or corresponding author without my permission or knowledge. Considering that all misconducts were directed by an author during initial manuscripts’ submissions, I opened a case in Iran’s Cyber Police (FATA) to unravel the true identity of the submitting author. After Cyber Police’s report revealed the true identity of the submitting author, the court started a thorough investigation and finally convicted the submitting author for identity fraud and data forgery through creating and using fake email addresses.