Hacker falsifies peer reviews
Publisher Elsevier has withdrawn eleven scientific articles. Someone hacked their system in November and falsified the evaluation of peer reviewers. The authors are allowed to submit their work again.
According to the publisher it was alerted by an author of Optics & Laser Technology (JOLT). Reviewers were invited to evaluate his work, but he did not invite anyone. An investigation was launched immediately. It turned out that someone had been able to obtain the EES username and password information from this author.
Fake reviews are becoming a larger problem according to Elsevier. For example, this fall some authors created new e-mail accounts (from free services as Yahoo and Gmail) under false names, so they could review their own publication.
