Prominent chemistry journal loses its impact factor

The prominent academic journal Chemosphere is the latest title to lose its impact factor—a metric often controversially used to evaluate researchers and their work—after retracting a series of papers it published.

Chemosphere retracted at least eight papers in December, according to the research integrity blog Retraction Watch. It has issued 60 expressions of concern, which alert readers to possible problems with papers, since April.

The turmoil prompted Clarivate’s Web of Science (WOS), which issues journal impact factors for scholarly journals, to remove Chemosphere from its index on Dec. 16. The removal means that authors who publish in Chemosphere no longer have the benefit of having their papers or their citations included in the index.

In recent months, WOS has delisted a string of journals from its index, including the pioneering biology journal eLife. In that case, WOS cited the journal’s unorthodox practice of neither accepting nor rejecting papers but rather posting all submitted papers alongside their referee reports. WOS also paused the indexing of Cureus and Heliyon, journals that publish across several disciplines.

Chemosphere was recently in the news for publishing a study suggesting that toxic flame retardants could be contaminating household kitchen items made of black plastic. The study authors later issued a correction noting that a math error meant the risk they reported was an order of magnitude too high.

Elsevier, the Dutch giant that publishes Chemosphere, told Retraction Watch that its ethics team is conducting in-depth investigations into potential breaches of the journal’s publishing policies.