As Israeli voters go to the polls on Tuesday, senior sector figures hope that a new administration would reverse the politicisation of universities and ease international boycotts. But with higher education low on the campaign agenda, few promises are being made. Juliette Rowsell reports

The Elsevier journal Stoten has recently retracted 161 papers, many of them over concerns about conflicts of interest and the addition of authors late in the review stage. But can editors who are handling hundreds of papers a year be expected to keep oversight of such matters, or do publishers need to design better systems? John Ross reports