A Comprehensive Survey of Retracted Articles from the Scholarly Literature

<div><h3>Background</h3><p>The number of retracted scholarly articles has risen precipitously in recent years. Past surveys of the retracted literature each limited their scope to articles in PubMed, though many retracted articles are not indexed in PubMed. To understand the scope and characteristics of retracted articles across the full spectrum of scholarly disciplines, we surveyed 42 of the largest bibliographic databases for major scholarly fields and publisher websites to identify retracted articles. This study examines various trends among them.</p> <h3>Results</h3><p>We found, 4,449 scholarly publications retracted from 1928–2011. Unlike Math, Physics, Engineering and Social Sciences, the percentages of retractions in Medicine, Life Science and Chemistry exceeded their percentages among Web of Science (WoS) records. Retractions due to alleged publishing misconduct (47%) outnumbered those due to alleged research misconduct (20%) or questionable data/interpretations (42%). This total exceeds 100% since multiple justifications were listed in some retraction notices. Retraction/WoS record ratios vary among author affiliation countries. Though widespread, only miniscule percentages of publications for individual years, countries, journals, or disciplines have been retracted. Fifteen prolific individuals accounted for more than half of all retractions due to alleged research misconduct, and strongly influenced all retraction characteristics. The number of articles retracted per year increased by a factor of 19.06 from 2001 to 2010, though excluding repeat offenders and adjusting for growth of the published literature decreases it to a factor of 11.36.</p> <h3>Conclusions</h3><p>Retracted articles occur across the full spectrum of scholarly disciplines. Most retracted articles do not contain flawed data; and the authors of most retracted articles have not been accused of research misconduct. Despite recent increases, the proportion of published scholarly literature affected by retraction remains very small. Articles and editorials discussing retractions, or their relation to research integrity, should always consider individual cases in these broad contexts. However, better mechanisms are still needed for raising researchers’ awareness of the retracted literature in their field.</p> </div

Scope of “non-PubMed” retracted articles.

<p>Of 3,490 retracted articles with a known year of retraction, 1,880 were labeled with “retracted publication” in the publication type field in the PubMed record (on 21 Sep 2011), and 1,610 were not. The prominence of retracted articles outside of PubMed has increased since 2002.</p

Attributes of article retraction cases analyzed in this study.

<p>Attributes of article retraction cases analyzed in this study.</p

Justifications for retraction stated in the notices consulted, which accounted for 4,232 retracted articles.

<p>Only 20% of articles were retracted due to research misconduct, while more than twice that many were retracted due to publishing misconduct. Note that 42% were retracted because of “questionable data or interpretations.” Percentages are based on the 3,631 ( = 4,232−601) notices which stated the justification.</p

Yearly distribution of retracted articles based on author affiliation countries.

<p>(A) Number of articles retracted per year for EU-27, and top 5 non-EU countries. Note that China’s large spike in 2010 was mainly due to H. Zhong and T. Liu; and the EU-27 spike in 2011 is due to J. Boldt. Thus far in 2011, values for China (either red line), and EU-27 minus J. Boldt (green, dashed line) remain well below the USA values (either blue line). (B) Ratio of number of retracted articles/number of Web of Science articles for each year and geographic region. Because many retracted articles are not in Web of Science, these values are not true proportions, but allow for country comparisons.</p

Forty-two data sources were consulted to locate retracted articles.

<p>For each source, the specific query used and number of records returned during the most recent query are indicated. Field abbreviations are: KW = key word; PT = publication type; SO = source (i.e. journal) title; TI = title.</p

The top “repeat offenders” are collectively responsible for 52% of the world’s retractions due to alleged research misconduct.

<p>These cases distort figures for individual journals, years, countries and subdisciplines, and are distributed throughout North America, Europe and Asia. Nine of the 15 are in medical fields.</p>1<p>Excluding one 2010 retraction, the Boldt case accounts for 87 (49%) of the 176 retractions for the entire EU-27 thus far in 2011.</p>2<p>According to the IEEExplore database, this author has allegedly fabricated data in 39 publications and co-authors of 14 additional publications.</p>3<p>The 72 retractions of these two authors represent 34% of China’s 210 retractions for 2010 and 8.9% of all 811 retractions for China.</p>4<p>These four authors account for 101 (7.5%) of all 1,355 USA retractions. It is noteworthy that Dr. Schön’s retractions include 10 articles from <i>Science</i> and 7 from <i>Nature</i>.</p>5<p>These two authors account for 40 (16%) of all 263 retractions for Japan.</p>7<p>This author accounts for 19 (6.8%) of all 280 retractions for India. Despite only 19 retractions, an institutional review alleged “plagiarizing and/or falsifying more than 70 research papers” <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0044118#pone.0044118-Service1" target="_blank">[34]</a> by this author.</p>1–6,8–9,<p>Including 39 of Dr. Maxim’s articles with allegedly fabricated data, these 13 authors account for 391 (54%) of the <u>world</u> total of 725 retractions due to alleged research misconduct.</p

Yearly distribution of articles retracted from 1980–2010.

<p>(A) Counts for total number of articles published (n = 4,268) or retracted (n = 2,961) for each year from 1980–2010 from dataset of 4,449 retracted articles. These values differ because an additional 508 articles have been retracted thus far in 2011, and many online-only retraction notices do not indicate retraction year. (B) Percentages of records retracted are based on numbers of records with “retracted publication” in the document type field of PubMed or “retracted article” in the title field of Web of Science divided by total number of records for each year.</p