A cross-disciplinary and severity-based study of author-related reasons for retraction

Non‐author entities accountable for retractions: A diachronic and cross‐disciplinary exploration of reasons for retraction

“…In 123 (27.77%) of these retraction notices, accountable entities could not be clearly identified due to the lack of adequate information about reasons for retraction. This sizeable proportion corroborated Xu and Hu's (2022) findings about the severity and complexity of the issue of retraction notices lacking transparency about reasons for retraction. Equivocal or missing information on reasons for retraction can mislead stakeholders in particular and the academic community in general about the nature of the retracted research and work against the effective correction of the contaminated scientific literature, the upholding of academic integrity, and the dispensation of punishment for research/publication misconduct.…”

“…This study also aimed to explore potential disciplinary differences with respect to non‐author entities accountable for retractions. In our examination of 6861 retraction notices that identified authors as the sole accountable entities (Xu & Hu 2022), we found that journals in hard disciplines (i.e., natural sciences) published over 23 times more retraction notices than those in soft disciplines (i.e., social sciences, arts, and the humanities) did. There were also significant disciplinary differences in the disclosed reasons for retraction by type and severity.…”

“…First, identifiability of such entities is an indicator of transparency about retractions. The pervasive lack of transparency in retraction notices (e.g., Azoulay et al, 2017; Hesselmann et al, 2017; Vuong, 2019; Xu & Hu, 2022) makes it difficult, if not impossible, to discern accountable entities and the nature of the retraction‐engendering acts in many cases. Second, a comprehensive examination of entities accountable for retractions can help dispel the stereotypical perception that only authors of retracted publications are culpable.…”

“…The findings of this study can promote an awareness of non-author entities liable for retractions, provide practical implications for handling retractions more effectively and efficiently, and inform the development of criteria for assessing the quality of retraction notices and academic journals/ publishers.The above implications notwithstanding, this study had several limitations. First, since retraction notices were adopted as the only data source for the study, the identification and quantification of accountable non-author entities and their reasons for retraction may not fully reflect the real picture.Therefore, as suggested byXu and Hu (2022), future research can complement retraction notices with other data sources, such as Retraction Watch blog posts, institutional investigation reports, and news media. Second, this study relied exclusively on an etic textual analysis of the retraction notices and lacked an emic (i.e., an insider) perspective to explore the factors contributing to the observed patterns.…”

May Authors’ Published Articles Last Forever!

“…There are several reasons for retractions such as plagiarism, unreliable data/results, and data fabrication/falsification [2]. Wadgave and Khairnar evaluated the retracted publications in dentistry [3].…”