Journal of Chemistry would like to express concern with the article titled “Physicochemical Parameters and Bioactive Compounds of Strawberry Tree (Arbutus unedo L.) Honey” published in Journal of Chemistry in 2015 [1] due to possible errors in the reporting.
The journal received a claim of authorship from the Ph.D. cosupervisor of the first author, which the authors disputed. The claimant provided manuscript drafts that reported results done on honey samples collected in January 2010 from one beekeeper in the Algarve, while the published article reports results done on samples collected from December 2010 to March 2011 from several beekeepers in the Algarve. The data in the published article are nearly identical to those in the drafts provided by the claimant despite describing different samples. The authors acknowledge the drafts are genuine, but say the research was done again on new samples of honey.
Journal of Chemistry asked the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso (PUCV) and Universidade do Algarve (University of the Algarve) to investigate. The University of the Algarve’s investigation was inconclusive, and the PUCV ended their investigation when the first author left that institution. As neither institutional investigation provided conclusive results, the journal’s editors would like to inform readers of possible mistakes in the reported experimental results.