scientific papers – UMassD Scholarly Communications Committee

by Judy Farrar

One tool in the effort to highlight the fake paper crisis, is the non-profit Retraction Watch blog and database of retracted scientific papers. According to their blog, after they launched the website in 2010, the database listed about 200 papers. Each year has seen an increase and as of now the database contains over 50,000 entries. In September 2023 the Retraction Watch dataset was purchased by Crossref, an organization that assigns digital object identifiers, and was made a public resource with secure funding. Search the database at https://retractiondatabase.org/RetractionSearch.aspx

The Retraction Watch blog features topics such as the “The top 10 most highly cited retracted papers,” and “Retracted coronavirus (COVID-19) papers,” which currently lists over 450 retracted publications, and “Papers and peer reviews with evidence of ChatGPT writing.” A recent feature is the Hijacked Journal tracker, a spreadsheet identifying hijacked journal domains based on an analysis of the archives of clone journals: https://retractionwatch.com/the-retraction-watch-hijacked-journal-checker

Caution sign — Photo by Oliver Hale on Unsplash

by Sara Pike

This year, our committee will look at the sham and retracted paper crisis in more depth and share information with the community through this blog. We will begin by providing an overview and information about paper retraction, which is the flagging of a published work in a journal due to a serious issue like data falsification or major errors in the research that are discovered after the publication process is complete.

Discussion in academic circles and in the news about research integrity, paper retractions and falsified research continues to be a major topic and a major source of concern for academia and society at large, as examples of recent articles attest.

“1 in 7 scientific papers is fake, suggests study that author calls ‘wildly nonsystematic’” https://retractionwatch.com/2024/09/24/1-in-7-scientific-papers-is-fake-suggests-study-that-author-calls-wildly-nonsystematic/

“Whistleblowers flagged 300 scientific papers for retraction. Many journals ghosted them” https://www.science.org/content/article/whistleblowers-flagged-300-scientific-papers-for-retraction-many-journals-ghosted-them

Paper retraction goes beyond the correction of mistakes in published papers, and should be considered by either the author(s) or an editorial board if there are ethical concerns related to plagiarism, peer review, unreliable data, unauthorized use of data, copyright infringement, conflicts of interest and the like. https://publicationethics.org/retraction-guidelines

COPE, the Committee on Publication Ethics, provides this and much more information, including formal guidelines for paper retraction that many publishers rely on. If authors become aware of relevant issues with their work, they are strongly encouraged to explore self-retraction of papers by contacting the editorial board of the publication in question. In the months ahead we will explore topics related to paper mills and falsification of research articles as we seek to support scholars and their work.

Tag: scientific papers

Retraction Watch

Paper Retraction: The Process and Why It Happens

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