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

Abstract

Academic journal publications may be retracted following institutional investigations that confirm allegations of research misconduct. Retraction notices can provide insight into the role institutional investigations play in the decision to retract a publication. Through a content analysis of 7,318 retraction notices published between 1927 and 2019 and indexed by the Web of Science, we found that most retraction notices (73.7%) provided no information about institutional investigations that may have led to retractions. A minority of the retraction notices (26.3%) mentioned an institutional investigation either by journal authorities (12.1%), research performing organizations (10.3%), joint institutions (1.9%), research integrity and ethics governing bodies (1.0%), third-party institutions (0.5%), unspecified institutions (0.4%), or research funding organizations (0.1%). Comparing retraction notices issued before and after the introduction of retraction guidelines by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in 2009 revealed that those published after the guidelines’ publication were more likely to report investigations by journal authorities. Comparing retraction notices from different disciplines revealed that those from social sciences and the humanities were more likely to disclose investigations by research performing organizations than those from biomedical and natural sciences. Based on these findings, we suggest that the COPE retraction guidelines in the future make it mandatory to disclose in retraction notices institutional investigations leading to retractions.

Can the principle of the ‘right to be forgotten’ be applied to academic publishing? Probe from the perspective of personal rights, archival science, open science and post‐publication peer review

“…The phenomenon in the latter paragraph is also related to a form of 'cancel culture' in academia, in which an individual's opinion or position is suppressed, via retractions, sometimes in response to mass or social pressure (Garry, 2023;Sadaba & Herrero, 2022;Teixeira da Silva, 2021d). We are of the belief that it is because there exists a very fine or hazy line between the right of preservation and the right of deletion, and an intersection with an author's inherent rights of deletion that may pit authors against publishers' legal departments, inducing opacity in retraction notices Teixeira da Silva & Vuong, 2022;Xu et al, 2023). This might even explain why (according to our observations) a number of authors are voicing their disagreement with the retraction of their papers.…”

Potential Issues in Mandating a Disclosure of Institutional Investigation in Retraction Notices

“…The nature and characteristics of retraction notices have been the topics examined in several recent papers (Moylan & Kowalczuk, 2016 ; Vuong, 2020 ; Hesselmann & Reinhart, 2021 ; Teixeira da Silva & Vuong, 2022 ; Xu et al, 2023 ; Xu & Hu, 2023 ). A general concern voiced is that such notices tend to be brief and are insufficiently informative or transparent.…”

“…Writing in the pages of Science and Engineering Ethics , Xu and colleagues reported that 73.7% of retraction notices indexed by the Web of Science (1927–2019) provided no information about institutional investigations that may have led to the retractions (Xu et al, 2023 ). Xu et al noted that their findings “… points to a substantial lack of transparency about the decision-making process of retraction ”.…”