Nature publisher wins libel trial

BBC : A former editor of the journal Chaos, Solitons and Fractals has lost his libel suit against the Nature Publishing Group. Mohamed El Naschie, an Egyptian theoretical physicist, objected to an article published in Nature in 2008, which pointed out that El Naschie had himself written a number of the papers that appeared in his journal and that they tended to be of poor quality. The judge in the case noted that El Naschie apparently “had little if any interest in the norms of scientific publishing or the ethical considerations which underpinned them,” according to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Because the trial took four years and may end up costing hundreds of thousands of pounds, it has prompted a campaign for libel reform in the UK.