Peer review is an essential process to vet the credibility of submitted manuscripts to the academic journals. The quality of peer review affirms how much a journal is serious in publishing sound research papers. It has been observed that many journals are publishing papers having serious technical issues. It is a worthy question to ask, why journal Editors and Reviewers either relax the review or they themselves are nescient and incapable to catch extremely serious blunders made by authors? The article Ataei et al. (2024) titled “The predictors of social capital in agricultural consultation, technical, and engineering service companies” is a good example of such conduct of Editors and Reviewers.

This article is published in Heliyon published by Cell Press/ Elsevier and indexed on Scopus, PubMed Central, DOAJ, and Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) (Clarivate Impact factor 2022: 4). Journals indexed with these indexing/abstracting services are considered as the most reliable sources of information which has become a myth now. Relaxed peer review or no peer review, whatever we call it, the analysis of the present article shows that the Editors and Reviewers completely failed to identify very basic level mistakes. Heliyon charges an Article Publishing Fee of USD 2,100. Let’s start analyzing the article!.

In the introduction section, the Authors didn’t explicitly mention the Research Question(s) the study is going to address. Strangely, the Authors mentioned two (2) Research Questions in the “Conclusion” of the article (p. 8). We wonder, why do the Authors, Editors, and Reviewers think that the appropriate place to present Research Questions is the “Conclusion” not the “Introduction”? We know that Research Questions should be formulated following the standard protocols devised by researchers to formulate RQs. These are the RQs directing the researcher to choose the right research paradigm. If there are no RQs, the whole research becomes questionable. The strangest point is the placement of RQs in the “Conclusion” section.

The second section “Literature review and theoretical framework” doesn’t present any theory to underpin the study of hypothesized relationships. In fact, the word “theory” is not used a single time in the whole study. How a “theoretical framework” without a “theory” is acceptable to the journal Editors, and Reviewers is a big question? Bourdieu's (1986), Coleman’s (1988), Putnam's (2001) or other theories of capital could have been used to support the framework of this study.

Giving a thorough look at the Literature Review, one can observe that the authors followed a “citation-driven” approach instead of following the “theory-driven” approach to justify the study relationships. Another stern objection is related to a variable “Job Security”. No arguments were provided to relate “job security” with “social capital”. The word “job security” was not even used in the Literature Review text. Therefore, we pose a valid question here. Why did Editors and Reviewers allow the publication of a paper missing an important construct?

It is worth noting to mention that the Authors didn’t propose hypotheses at the end of the Literature Review but in the “Results” section (p. 6). Why do the Editors and Reviewers think that “Results” is an appropriate place to report study hypotheses and “Literature Review” is not the right place?

The “Methodology” section also contains significant problems pertaining to measurement, reliability, and analysis. For instance, Authors didn’t mention the sources of scales used to tap independent variables i.e., investment (three items), cooperation (three items), media (four items), job security (three items), risk-taking (five items), and motivation (five items). It seems that the Authors give an overall impression as they adapted these scales from Onyx and Bullen (2000) [p. 5, Ref No: 26]. No doubt that the Authors might have adapted the Social Capital scale from Onyx and Bullen (2000), but they failed to explain and justify how they modified the items as per their requirements. We question this because Onyx and Bullen (2000) provided social capital scale with the following dimensions and items: Participation in the Local Community (7 items), Social Agency or Proactivity in a Social Context (7 items), Feelings of Trust and Safety (5 items), Neighborhood Connections (5 items), Family and Friends Connections (3 items), Tolerance of Diversity (2 items), Value of Life (2 items), and Work Connections (3 items). Whereas, the authors reported the following scale components to tap social capital: participation in the local community (4 items), proactivity in a social context (3 items), social trust (4 items), neighborhood connections (3 items), friends and family connections (4 items), capacity to accept differences (3 items), appreciation of life (4 items), and work connections (5 items). It is very clear that the Authors added/reduced the numbers of items for each dimension as per their requirement. But a big question we pose is: How can the Authors change the psychometric properties of a scale without conducting and reporting the scientific methodology needed to adapt the scales? At least, the Authors should have reported the Factor Analysis results for the adapted scale. We wonder how can the Editors and Reviewers miss this very important methodological procedure that is essential to establish the credibility of adapted measures?

Our next observation is about the biggest blunder made by the Authors, Editors, and Reviewers. Yes. It is!

In section 3. Methodology (p. 5) the Authors mention that:

“The reliability of the questionnaire was estimated by Cronbach’s alpha, for which 30 questionnaires were filled out by a part of the statistical population, and after data processing, Cronbach’s alpha was estimated for the items and questions at 0.82.”

The first blunder here is that the Authors reported a single value of Cronbach’s alpha of the whole questionnaire for the pilot study (30 responses only). Isn’t it astonishing? Reliability for questionnaire! The Authors, Editors, and Reviewers don’t know that Cronbach's alpha is always calculated for “constructs’ measures” not for questionnaires. The Cronbach’s alpha should be reported for each scale tapping a construct. Therefore, the Authors should have reported seven (7) reliability values for seven (7) construct measures (6 IVs and 1 DV).

The second blunder is that the Authors didn’t report Cronbach's alpha values for the main study (n=107). Seven (7) Cronbach’s alpha values should be reported for seven (7) construct measures used in this study.

Since the information about the sources of six (6) IVs, scientific adaptation of scales, and reliability values of all measures is not provided, the study could not be considered as credible research on social capital in agricultural consultation, technical, and engineering service companies. We suggest readers not to use and cite such studies as a credible source of information for their research papers.

Lastly, we would like to draw the attention of our readers to the Regression Equation reported in the "Results" section (p. 7). We wonder why the authors didn't present the original Regression Equation with six (6) independent variables. Even if few IVs are statistically insignificant, it is wrong to exclude them from the Regression Equation because they were included in the actual Regression Analysis.

We believe this article should be retracted or an erratum notice should be issued by the Publisher/Editors of Heliyon.

To read the original article, please visit the Heliyon website by clicking here

Update: On 15 January, 2024, Mr. On Ching Lo (Publisher, Heliyon) contacted the Authors and asked to provide their collective response via the corresponding author Mr. Hamid Karimi, by 12 February 2024. Publisher committed that Authors' response may also be discussed with an Editor to determine any corrective courses of action.

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