INTRODUCTION
METHODS
Literature search strategy and eligibility criteria
Classification of reason for retraction
Data extraction and classification of included studies
1. Name of the first author; publication year; period of retraction; year of oldest publication; field of study; database searched
2. Number of total published articles during the study period corresponding to the journals/fields of the retracted articles; the number of retracted articles included in the study; the number of journals that published the retracted articles; average time-to-retraction (time from publication to retraction)
3. Countries affiliated with the retracted articles (country affiliation of the institution, first author, or corresponding author, defined by the article); publication type of the retracted articles; median impact factor of the retracted articles; citations of the retracted articles (pre-retraction cites, post-retraction cites, total retraction cites) as presented by the original article
4. Reason for retraction and the number of studies or the proportion for each reason.
a. Biomedicine; Studies based on a search of PubMed/MEDLINE, a biomedical database
b. Medicine; Limited to medicine only
c. Field of study subspecialized from biomedicine
d. Country of affiliation or the country of the authors
e. Publication type or journal type
f. Others (including both biomedical and other disciplines)
Statistical analysis
RESULTS
Table 1
Author (year of publication) | Period of retraction | Yeara | Categories | Database | Average retraction period, mon | % of total misconduct | % of error | % of publication issues | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Publisher error/misconduct, compromised peer review | Authorship issue | |||||||||
Biomedicine | ||||||||||
Budd et al.26 (1998) | 1966–1997 | - | Biomedicine | MEDLINE | 25.8 | 36.6% | 54.9% | |||
Redman et al.49 (2008) | 1995–2004 | - | Biomedicine | PubMed | 20.8 | 34.0% | 42.0% | |||
Woolley et al.58 (2011) | 1966–2008 | - | Biomedicine (pharmaceutical) | MEDLINE | - | 41.0% | 42.3% | 1.0% | ||
Fang et al.3 (2012) | 1977–2012 | 1973 | Biomedicine | PubMed | 32.9 | 67.4% | 21.3% | |||
Singh et al.54 (2014) | 2004–2008 | - | Biomedicine | PubMed, MEDLINE | 31.2 | 55.4% | 31.5% | 1.9% | ||
2009–2013 | - | 12.4 | 61.0% | 28.0% | 3.0% | |||||
Madlock-Brown and Eichmann42 (2015) | 2003–2010 | - | Biomedicine | MEDLINE | - | 48.1% | 43.8% | 2.3% | ||
Damineni et al.32 (2015) | 2012–2013 | - | Biomedicine | MEDLINE | 29.7 | 56.1% | 29.7% | 1.9% | ||
61.0% | 28.6% | 2.7% | ||||||||
Li et al.41 (2018) | 1980–2016 | - | Biomedicine (human research participants) | PubMed, Retraction Watch | - | 63.8% | 15.4% | 1.3% | ||
Campos-Varela and Ruano-Raviña27 (2019) | 2013–2016 | - | Biomedicine | PubMed | 10b | 47.4% | 0.1% | 18.1% | ||
Decullier et al.33 (2013) | 2008 | - | Biomedicine | MEDLINE | - | 46.8% | 32.3% | 3.4% | 5.1% | |
Deculllier and Maisonneuve34 (2018) | 2016 | - | 58.5% | 26.0% | 3.3% | 0.0% | ||||
Medicine | ||||||||||
Gaudino et al.15 (2021) | 1971–2020 | 1923 | Medicine | Retraction Watch | 21.6b | 71.4% | 37.4% | 25.4% | 7.3% | |
Subspecialty | ||||||||||
Balhara and Mishra24 (2015) | 1980–2013 | 1980 | Psychiatry | PubMed | - | 47.3% | 9.1% | 1.8% | 5.5% | |
Rosenkrantz50 (2016) | 1983–2013 | 1983 | Radiology | PubMed | 32.4 | 47.9% | 33.3% | 6.3% | 8.3% | |
Chauvin et al.29 (2019) | 2001–2016 | 2001 | Emergency Medicine | MEDLINE, Web of Science, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Retraction Watch | 10.2 | 46.4% | 25.0% | 7.1% | ||
King et al.40 (2018) | 1991–2015 | 1991 | Surgery | PubMed | 43.2 (24b) | 76.1% | 9.8% | 8.2% | ||
Chambers et al.28 (2019) | 1989–2018 | 1985 | Obstetrics and Gynecology | PubMed | 24b | 52.8% | 21.6% | 10.2% | 5.7% | |
Bolboacă et al.25 (2019) | 1986–2017 | 1983 | Radiology-imaging diagnostic method | PubMed, Scopus | 16b | 57.4% | 24.1% | 9.3% | 3.7% | |
Dal-Ré and Ayuso31 (2019) | 1970–2018 | 1983 | Genetics (medicine) | Retraction Watch | - | 50.4% | 10.0% | 7.2% | ||
1988 | Genetics (non-medicine) | 62.9% | 14.2% | 12.2% | ||||||
Nair et al.45 (2020) | 1993–2017 | 1986 | Anesthesiology | PubMed, Embase, Retraction Watch | 96b | 88.6% | 4.3% | 0.9% | ||
Dutta Majumder et al.35 (2021) | 1994–2019 | 1994 | Ophthalmology | PubMed, MEDLINE | 12b | 57.1% | 15.5% | 1.2% | 7.1% | |
Panahi and Soleimanpour47 (2021) | 1981–2021 | 1981 | Hematology | Web of Science | 50.83 | 81.2% | 13.9% | 5.9% | 2.0% | |
Shimray53 (2022) | 2020–2021 | 2020 | COVID-19 | Retraction Watch | - | 21.7% | 21.0% | 12.1% | 1.3% | |
Dal-Ré30 (2019) | 1970–2018 | 1975 | Pharmacology (medicine) | Retraction Watch | - | 38.2% | 38.8% | 6.5% | 19.4% | |
Wang et al.55 (2017) | 1995–2016 | 1995 | Neurosurgery | MEDLINE, Embase, Individual Journals | 28.1 | 62.2% | 11.2% | 7.1% | 7.1% | |
Rai and Sabharwal48 (2017) | 1984–2016 | 1987 | Orthopedic surgery | PubMed, Google Scholar, CINAHL, Scopus, MEDLINE | 19.4 | 81.4% | 8.5% | |||
Hwang and Wu39 (2018) | 1991–2017 | - | Plastic surgery | PubMed, Scopus | - | 53.8% | 1.9% | 1.9% | ||
Rapani et al.16 (2020) | 2005–2018 | 2001 | Dentistry | PubMed, Retraction Watch | 25.2 | 51.1% | 26.1% | 7.2% | 5.0% | |
Wasiak et al.57 (2018) | 1989–2017 | 1989 | Radiation oncology | MEDLINE, PubMed, Embase, Cochrane library | 44 | 43.1% | 20.7% | 3.4% | 5.2% | |
Kardeş et al.60 (2020) | –2019 | 1979 | Rehabilitation | Web of Science, PubMed, Retraction Watch | 20.4b | 70.3% | 24.3% | 2.7% | 18.9% | |
Sports science | 20.0b | 51.9% | 40.4% | 0.0% | 11.5% | |||||
Country | ||||||||||
Rossouw et al.51 (2020) | 2014–2018 | - | Africa | Retraction Watch | 25.02 | 60.4% | 19.2% | 9.0% | ||
Palla et al.46 (2020) | 2015–2018 | - | China | Retraction Watch | - | 62.4% | 11.2% | 17.8% | ||
India | 64.0% | 14.0% | 4.0% | |||||||
Elango36 (2021) | 1992–2020 | 1990 | India | PubMed | 34.32 | 75.2% | 4.7% | 1.8% | 3.9% | |
Mansourzadeh et al.43 (2021) | –2017 | 2001 | Iran | PubMed | 20.8 | 67.7% | 3.0% | 47.6% | ||
Huh et al.59 (2016) | 1999–2016 | 1990 | Korea | KoreaMed | 45.9 | 66.7% | 4.4% | 3.5% | ||
Kocyigit and Akyol62 (2022) | –2022 | 2000 | Turkey | PubMed | 10.33b | 67.4% | 19.8% | 2.3% | 7.0% | |
Stavale et al.61 (2019) | 2004–2017 | 1997 | Brazil | PubMed, Web of Science, Biblioteca Virtual em Saú de, Google Scholar, Retraction Watch | 40.3 | 84.6% | 18.5% | 6.2% | 3.1% | |
Publication | ||||||||||
Wang et al.56 (2019) | 2003–2017 | - | Open access journals | MEDLINE | 21.3 | 54.9% | 23.8% | 15.0% | 10.8% | |
Moylan and Kowalczuk44 (2016) | 2000–2015 | - | BioMed Central | BioMed Central | 11.1b | 42.5% | 11.2% | 40.3% | 3.7% | |
Shi et al.52 (2021) | 2004–2020 | - | Systematic reviews (non-Cochrane) | MEDLINE, Embase | 14b | 25.8% | 28.3% | 40.9% | 4.4% | |
Elango37 (2022) | –2021 | 1998 | Editorial | PubMed | 29.76 | 52.0% | 4.0% | |||
Others | ||||||||||
Grieneisen and Zhang38 (2012) | 1928–2011 | - | 12 scholarly fields | 42 data sources | - | 46.8% | 20.6% | 9.6% | 6.1% | |
Xu and Hu23 (2021) | 1900–2019 | - | Natural sciences, social sciences, arts, humanities | Web of Science | - | 71.7% | 31.1% | 4.9% | 8.7% |