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BackgroundPublication retraction is a mechanism to preserve the scientific literature against publications that contain seriously flawed or erroneous data, redundant publication, plagiarism, unethical research, and other features that compromise the integrity of science. An increase in the occurrence of retractions in recent years has been reported. Nevertheless, there is scarce information on this topic concerning publications in dentistry and related specialties. Thus, this study aimed to investigate retracted papers published in dental journals.MethodsData collection included an exploratory search in PubMed and a specific search in SCImago Journal Rank indexed journals, complemented by the cases reported on the Retraction Watch website and in PubMed. All 167 dental journals included in SCImago were searched for identification of retracted articles up to March 2016. The selected retracted articles and their corresponding retraction notices were recorded and assessed for classification according to the reason for retraction and other additional information.ResultsForty of the 167 journals scrutinised at SCImago (23.9%) had at least one retracted article, and four additional journals were identified from the Retraction Watch website. A total of 72 retracted found were retracted for the reasons: redundant publication (20.8%), plagiarism (18.1%), misconduct (13.8%), overlap (13.6%) and honest error (9.7%). Higher number of retractions were reported in those journals with cites/doc <2.0—n = 49 (74.2%). The types of studies were mainly laboratory studies (34.7%), case reports (22.2%) and review articles (13.9%).ConclusionsThe approach to ethical problems in papers published in dental scientific journals is still incipient; retractions were mostly due to the authors’ malpractice and were more frequently related to journals with less impact.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13104-017-2576-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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