Case study on retraction of articles by Thinking Skills and Creativity journal

Abstract

In 2022, the journal of the first quartile, indexed by Web of Science and Scopus, called Thinking Skills and Creativity, retracted 47 articles simultaneously. The author of this article found that 27 of the retracted articles belonged to authors from China, 10 – from Russia and 10 – from Kazakhstan. The article describes how the fact of retraction was perceived by the Kazakhstan authors of the retracted articles, what is the role of intermediaries, the degree of participation of the authors themselves in the work on the articles, what lessons were learned by the authors from this case. The research method used in this work is an interview with the authors responsible for correspondence, according to a questionnaire that included 11 questions. The sample included six authors from various universities of Kazakhstan. When analyzing the data, the content analysis method was used. The respondents’ answers to each question were analyzed by code and category. The answers showed that in order to publish an article in this journal, the authors: a) used the help of intermediaries; b) were not acquainted with the reviews in the process of double-blind peer-review; c) tried not to disclose the fact of retraction at their university; d) after retraction tried to make intangible claims to intermediaries, but were refused; e) in general, consider the fact of retraction an annoying misunderstanding due to the fault of the editorial board of the journal. This case clearly showed that it is necessary to purposefully and constantly improve the skills of authors in communication with foreign and domestic rating publications during the publication of scientific articles, to develop a culture of scientific writing at the institutional and individual level.