On Feb. 18, a researcher in Italy sent a disgruntled email to the editorial board of a Wiley tourism journal. Salvatore Bimonte had waited more than a year for his manuscript to be peer-reviewed, he complained, and then months more while the editor-in-chief was “actively working on” the revised version Bimonte submitted.

When Bimonte’s paper was finally rejected after 18 months — for reasons such as the topic not being “highly suitable” and the work not being submitted in the form of a case study — the researcher felt compelled to vent his frustration to the entire editorial board of the International Journal of Tourism Research (IJTR).

“Maybe, I would have been treated better if I had cited some of the editor in chief’s papers,” Bimonte, of the University of Siena, wrote in boldface in the email, which we have seen. Two days later, an unhappy editor at the journal quit, Retraction Watch has learned.

Since May 2023, the editor-in-chief of IJTR has been Timothy J. Lee. A professor at Macau University of Science and Technology in Macao, Lee promotes that he’s among the world’s top-cited researchers in 2025, and the number one citation-reaper in the category “Health & Wellness” on Google Scholar. He is a member of the editorial boards of “12 leading academic journals” and was the editor-in-chief of Taylor & Francis’ erstwhile International Journal of Tourism Sciences.

For several years before Lee took the helm at IJTR, his research — on topics like the “the economic value of urban forest parks” and the “influence of historical nostalgia on a heritage destination’s brand authenticity” — received a small, but steady, trickle of citations in the journal he now oversees.^1,2

In 2024, that trickle became a gushing river.

A Retraction Watch analysis of data from Clarivate’s Web of Science shows that of the 186 papers the IJTR published that year, 134, or nearly three-fourths, cited Lee’s work, often multiple times. The editor’s outsize influence continued through 2025 and has held up so far this year as well. Excluding self-citations, a total of 55% of the papers published in IJTR from 2024 until today contain references to Lee’s research. That’s a “staggering” number, according to Alberto Baccini, a colleague of Bimonte at the University of Siena, who studies publication metrics. Baccini said he had not seen a similar citation pattern at any other journal.

When first reached for comment, Lee told us that, “because the journal has been in transaction [sic] for a couple of years, the stat figures are not particularly stable or objectively reliable.”

“Just do not judge numbers based on a very subjective sample population over a short period of time,” he added.

After we sent him our full analysis, Lee explained that since he was “one of the very few editors of top-tier academic journals in the tourism discipline,” he had been invited to give lectures at “many mainland Chinese universities.”

“Over the last 2 to 3 years, half of all submitted papers came from China, and many were of high quality and suitable for publication,” he added. “Although I do NOT tell them to do so in an invited lecture, there was a strong myth among many Chinese researchers that, to be accepted, they had to cite papers published by the journal’s editor, and many papers published by Chinese authors cited my articles.”

A Wiley spokesperson told us the publisher is aware of the concerns about citation patterns at IJTR. Wiley has “introduced an additional layer of screening in this journal to evaluate papers before proceeding to publication,” the spokesperson said by email. “We are working closely with the editor-in-chief to ensure that best practices are being followed.”

Many of the authors who cited Lee are indeed based in China, often at Lee’s own institution, the Web of Science data show. But dozens work in other countries, including South Korea, United States, Malaysia, England and Turkey. All told, 107 of the 218 citing papers, or 49%, published from 2024 until today do not include an author in China.

Baccini said because the citations go to Lee’s work, wherever it may be published, the editor is the primary beneficiary, “not the journal.” While there is no evidence Lee coerced anyone to cite his work, Baccini added, such “evidence is nearly impossible to obtain because peer review is a completely secret process. Unless authors come forward to declare they were pressured to cite the editor-in-chief, the scientific community remains in the dark.”

For Juan Gabriel Brida, an editor at IJTR and an economist at Universidad de la República in Montevideo, Uruguay, Bimonte’s email became the last straw. He resigned on February 20 over what he called Lee’s “poor management” of the journal. Lee “doesn’t involve other members of the editorial board, and articles sit for over a year before receiving reviews,” Brida told us.

Lee did not comment on Bimonte’s case, but said Brida and another editor who resigned before Bimonte’s email had “their own personal reasons to resign. They are not as fast as I am. I am finalising many papers this month instead of waiting for them to complete the process. Also, I plan to recruit another 5 new associate editors in a couple of months; almost 10 very good candidates worldwide applied. Once they are recruited, we will achieve very good teamwork and harmony among us.”

“I have a monthly meeting with Wiley staff at the end of each month to update and discuss current issues,” Lee added. “There has been a major change to the submission and review system at my journal over the last 12 months, which has also caused delays in the process. The number of submitted papers has almost tripled in the last 3 years.”

According to a machine translation of a press release from Macau University celebrating Lee’s appointment to editor-in-chief, the professor’s “stated goal” was “to elevate the journal’s ranking to Q1 in [Clarivate’s Journal Citation Reports] within the next three years, with an impact factor exceeding 10.”

Lee “encourages faculty and students of the Macau University of Science and Technology’s School of Hotel and Tourism Management to cite IJTR articles as extensively as possible in their academic works and to promote the journal to colleagues and students worldwide,” the press release stated.

To Baccini, the case illustrates what the publish-or-perish mantra has done to science: “This system has transformed the role of editorial boards – and especially editors-in-chief – from gatekeepers for the scientific community into operatives for publishers, rewarded for boosting metrics.”

This article was authored by Frederik Joelving, and it was first published at Retraction Watch.