Saudi University Founded a Foreign Study without Major Contribution

A study [1] published on "Environmental Research" was partly founded by the King Saud University, an university in Saudi Arabia and named after the royal family. However, the only author from King Saud University, Hesham S Almoallim, did not have major contribution to the study. His contribution was stated "Writing-Reviewing and Editing", raising concerns of authorship-for-sale in this article.

According to the statement on the article [1], the study was conducted by Tan Phat Chau (the first author) with Van Lang University in Viet Nam, and was supervised by Kathirvel Brindhadevi in India, as well as Surachai Pikulkaew in Thailand. Other authors from United States, Saudi Arabia, and Thailand got involved in the study. This authorship pattern is also unusual and questionable.

The 5GH team is urging the publisher to open an investigation on this matter.



Reference

[1] 10.1016/j.envres.2022.112770






Author: WU Guangheng

Founder and Chair of the 5GH Foundation

E-Mail: wu@5gh.org.cn

Document ID: 5GH-WuGH-2025.000022

Publication Date: 2025.01.31

This article is licensed under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International License

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