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

Abstract

Retraction notices are expected to be transparent about entities accountable for retractions and their reasons for retraction. No previous research on retraction notices has investigated accountable entities other than authors of retracted publications and their reasons for retraction from a cross-disciplinary and a diachronic perspective. Drawing on a dataset of 7650 unique retraction notices published before 2020 and indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection, this study identified 457 retraction notices that held four types of non-author entities accountable. Journal authorities (i.e., editors and publishers) were found responsible for retractions in 62.14% of the retraction notices, followed by unidentifiable entities (26.91%), third parties (6.13%), and dual entities (i.e., both authors and journal authorities, 4.81%). The three most frequent reasons for retraction were republication of valid publications (36.76%), unspecified reasons (26.91%), and publication of unpublishable work (17.07%).Accountable non-author entities were more identifiable in the retraction notices published between 2010 and 2019 than in those published before 2010. Retraction notices in soft disciplines were more likely than those in hard disciplines to identify journal authorities as accountable entities.These findings offer implications for handling retractions more effectively and efficiently.

What do Retraction Notices Reveal About Institutional Investigations into Allegations Underlying Retractions?

“…It should be noted that our collection of retraction notices did not take into consideration the document type of retracted publications. We excluded 332 retraction notices of Cochrane reviews which were out-dated or replaced by a new version (Xu & Hu, 2022c ). As a result, the remaining 7,318 retraction notices published between 1927 and 2019 constituted the dataset for our study.…”

“…Publication year of retraction notices was adopted as retraction year, which was retrieved as meta-data of the WoS-indexed retraction notices collected 3 . Following Xu and Hu ( 2022c ), we divided retraction years into two retraction periods, namely from 1927 to 2009 and from 2010 to 2019 (Table 1 ). This classification was made for two reasons.…”

“…However, this expectation needs to be verified with empirical data from institutional investigations and their eventual corresponding retraction notices. Moreover, disciplinary variations have been found in authorship of retraction notices (Xu & Hu, 2018 ), the generic structure of retraction notices (Xu & Hu, 2021 ), and types and severity of reasons for retraction (Xu & Hu, 2022b , c ). Therefore, it would be interesting to find out whether disclosure of institutional investigations into allegations in retraction notices varies across disciplines as well.…”

Against “silent” retractions in neuroscience

“…In our view, retractions should not distort the scientific record, nor should they be an attempt to delete it. For this reason, RNs play an important role in shedding background information about the when, why, and how of retractions, although such transparency is sorely lacking in RNs, even among current status quo journals and publishers (Teixeira da Silva & Vuong, 2022; Xu & Hu, 2022).…”

Better guidance is needed for editorial expressions of concern

“…First, most journals offer too few amendment options, usually limited to "errata" for minor errors, and full "retractions" for pervasive errors or misconduct. Second, both corrections and retractions usually take the form of short notices that are often opaque, conveying incomplete and inadequate information about the specific nature of the changes and their reasons, a problem that still persists (Teixeira da Silva & Vuong, 2022;Xu & Hu, 2022). Third, the practice of making corrections is often perceived as stigmatization associated with fraud or incompetence, rather than confirming the integrity of published research.…”