The Litigious Author
In an attention economy, authorship stakes shift to reputation and away from validation
One seemingly new element of modern scholarly and scientific publishing is the litigious author — published authors who threaten to sue publishers, editors, or journals if they deign to retract papers, or even put up an Expression of Concern.
The idea seems to be that a retraction damages the reputation of the author. Yet, such issues are far more complicated as the reputations of the authors alone are not at stake. When we pause to contemplate what a retraction signifies, it gets complicated quickly. Even the editors of Retraction Watch seem to have an idiosyncratic view of whether retractions are good or bad.
There have been a few public author lawsuits, with more going on behind the scenes as well — as is always the case with litigious topics:
- In 2011, an author received an apology and $10,000 in legal fees from Elsevier after an article was retracted. It never went to court, and the lawyer involved seems a tough customer.
- In 2015, a judge dismissed a case when an author sued a journal for Expressions of Concern, with the judge writing: “The Court has little trouble concluding that the . . . Expression of Concern is not actionable for defamation.”
- In 2016, an author took initial steps against a publisher in a defamation and breach of contract suit in the UK. However, this seems to have gone nowhere since then.
Now, Sage is being sued by a group of 10 authors over three retracted papers, which I covered earlier this year. The papers certainly seemed dodgy to other scientists, with misleading double-y axes being called out by many.