Third Editor Fired in Elsevier's Citation Cartel Crackdown

Third Editor Fired in Elsevier's Citation Cartel Crackdown; Hundreds of Papers At Risk of Retraction

"This is not a series of coincidences; it is a blatant, industrial-scale quid pro quo."

Two weeks ago, Elsevier announced that they were hiring a new Editor-in-Chief at Research in International Business and Finance (RIBAF):

RIBAF’s previous Editor-in-Chief, John Goodell—a Professor of Finance at the University of Akron—was not due to have his term expire until 2027.

So, what happened?

I reached out to Goodell and Elsevier for comment, but did not receive a reply.

According to my sources, Goodell’s departure is directly due to the citation cartel I exposed 2 months ago that resulted in Elsevier firing of 2 other finance professors, Brian Lucey and Samuel Vigne—both are co-authors of Goodell.

Goodell has been a professor since 2008.

For the first decade, his publication output was steady and within the normal range: 2, 2, 6, 7, 8, 13, 11, 4, 3, 3, 3, 6 papers per year.

Then something changed.

From 2021 to 2025, his annual output exploded: 16, 34, 53, 58, and 32 papers.

How did he accomplish this amazing feat?

Simple: he was gifted 100+ papers by the now-fired Brian Lucey and Sam Vigne.

Lucey, as I described in my earlier articles, was fired as an editor or editor-in-chief at 5 journals: International Review of Financial Analysis, the International Review of Economics & Finance, Finance Research Letters, Financial Management, & Energy Finance.

Samuel Vigne was fired as the editor-in-chief of International Review of Financial Analysis and Finance Research Letters.

John Goodell published:

47 papers in International Review of Financial Analysis 12 papers in International Review of Economics & Finance 66 papers in Finance Research Letters alone

For a total of 125 papers in their corrupt journals!

If each of these 125 papers contains a modest 50 references, this generates roughly 6,250 citations to spread around his cronies. This obviously isn’t legitimate research; it is a citation-farming operation—a practice that has already prompted Elsevier to retract dozens of his cronies’ papers for “citation stacking.”

These hundreds of fraudulent publications have resulted in an explosion of Goodell’s citations, now at 15,663. In 2025 alone, he earned 4,203 citations, resulting in his citation profile exhibiting an exponential “J-curve”, a hallmark of citation rings.

According to an analysis published at PubPeer mapping the 500 top Finance Professors in the Elsevier ecosystem, the biggest blue dot in the middle of this graph of influence is John Goodell. Despite working at a less prestigious school, through corruption, he has made himself the single most influential researcher at the biggest academic publisher in the world.

He is the gatekeeper through whom the entire network must pass.

According to my sources, Goodell was widely-known to be running a gift-authorship and citation cartel with RIBAF for years in which he makes junior scholars work for him and he adds his name — “you add me on your paper - I get you a few guaranteed RIBAFs” deal, which is a retraction reason at Elsevier.

Elsevier’s guidelines are clear: if an editor receives a manuscript from a co-author and no independent editor is available at the journal, the paper is supposed to be transferred to another journal.

Because John Goodell handled some hundreds of such papers at his journal, Elsevier seems more interested in containing the scandal than confronting it directly. A full mea culpa would likely require retracting a vast number of articles, which would turn this into a major and deeply embarrassing story.

In an honest world, this journal should be shut down altogether, not reformed.

In RIBAF’s case, we are talking about hundreds of compromised papers. By my rough estimate, the number is around 200 retractable papers if you count active co-authors alone, and well above 350 if former collaborators are included.

Here is a straightforward example of how this paper trading scheme could work.

In January 2025 and March 2025, Emmanuel Abakah, Senior Lecturer in Finance at the University of Ghana, published two papers at Goodell’s RIBAF. While these papers were under review by John Goodell, Emmanuel Abakah added Goodell as a co-author to 2 publications in Brian Lucey’s other journal.

This pattern repeats hundreds of times:

1. Goodell receives a submission for review at RIBAF
2. Goodell is added as a co-author to that submitter’s paper at a different journal
3. The submitter’s RIBAF submission is accepted

Perhaps the most prolific example in this scheme is Dr. Anna Min Du, a Professor of Finance at Edinburgh Napier University. She published at least 22 RIBAFs in 2024-2025. While Du painstakingly lists all of her other publications on her personal website, she conspicuously omits any mention of RIBAF. It is possible that John Goodell gifted her 20+ RIBAF publications in one year, and she returned the favor by adding his name to 14 of her papers at other journals that same year.