Publisher Sage has retracted eight articles by the dismissed Radboud University researcher who manipulated data. Yannick Griep was a co-author of the articles in question, which were published in the scientific journal of which he himself was editor-in-chief.

In May, publisher Elsevier decided to retract an article by the former associate professor Yannick Griep on ‘Bokito behaviour’ – macho, domineering conduct – in the workplace, after a complaint about data manipulation had been upheld by a Nijmegen research integrity committee. Now publisher Sage is retracting no fewer than eight of the articles of the associate professor in Work and Organizational Psychology.

“Following concerns from the authors, former members of the editorial team and editorial board, Sage undertook an audit of the journal’s editorial and peer review practices,” the publisher writes on the website of Group & Organization Management (GOM), the scientific journal that Griep presided over from April 2022 to March this year .

Research integrity

At the end of 2024, Griep, at the time an associate professor of Work and Organisational Psychology, was summarily dismissed for invoice fraud. An inquiry by the Committee for Research Integrity also found that he had fabricated or manipulated data in at least one article. A university investigation into Griep’s other publications is still ongoing. Research by Vox revealed that there were also concerns about his research integrity at universities in Belgium and Canada where Griep had previously worked.

And now concerns have also been established about the peer review process of eight articles, which, according to Sage, fell short of the journal’s standards. “As the peer-review process was administered by the former Editor in Chief, who is also the co-author of the articles, the objectivity of the peer-review process has been compromised. In line with COPE guidelines, the articles have been retracted.”

COPE stands for Committee on Publication Ethics, an international body that draws up guidelines for ethical conduct in academic publishing. Sage is a member of COPE. “The retraction relates to the underlying review process and no determination has been made regarding the scientific content of the articles,” the publisher adds.

Normally, the editor-in-chief of a scientific journal does not review his or her own submitted articles, but delegates this task to another editor in order to avoid a conflict of interest. It appears that this has not been the case here.

Forty different authors

The Retraction Note itself, which accompanies each retracted article, lists all eight articles. Six of them are marked as retracted at the request of the publisher; for the other two, this was done at the request of “the publisher and the authors”. “Several authors on these articles,” Sage writes, “contacted the journal requesting a retraction.”

Although the name of former editor-in-chief Griep appears on every one of the articles, the publisher does not mention him explicitly. Sage is continuing its investigation into the case, the publisher concludes.

As a result of Sage’s decision, forty different authors lose one or more publications, including Griep himself. The retractions may also have consequences for other research: science website Retraction Watch notes that one of the articles, on the influence of the ‘psychological contract’ in the workplace, has already been cited 26 times in other papers.

It was already reported last week that Sage was investigating various articles by Griep.