Amend: an integrated platform of retracted papers and concerned papers

Whether an article has been retracted is contingent upon the official publication of the retraction notice by the journal. Generally, the retraction notice is published in the journal where the original article was published. Therefore, it is a challenge to compile a comprehensive list of retracted papers by collecting data from numerous journals. In addition, bibliographic databases may not update article status changes in a timely manner due to varying retrospective policies (Grieneisen & Zhang, 2012). Due to the above reasons, we collect retraction notices from the website of crossref. org, which is the central hub for registering and retrieving metadata of academic publications, and Web of Science, which is a widely used online research database and citation index. The process of compiling the list of retracted papers is as follows:

Retrieve the metadata of related to retracted papers or retraction notices, such as the title, journal, publication date and digital object identifier (DOI), and so on, by utilizing the Crossref API and specifying relevant keywords “retracted”, “withdrawn”, “retraction”, and so on.

The key terminology for identifying retracted papers, such as “retraction”, “retracted”, and “withdrawal”, are used in various contexts beyond retractions. For instance, “teeth-retraction” is a term used in orthodontics. Additionally, the term “retracted” can appear in articles studying academic misconduct. Hence, Amend platform exclusively includes paired retracted papers and retraction notices. As of now, Amend has accumulated over 40,000 retracted papers. Investigation and punishment announcements from NSFC, MOE, MOST, NHC are collected and link to the corresponding retracted papers.

In order to characterize the retracted articles from various perspectives, Amend platform has collected multiple attribute information of these articles. The collected information includes the following:

Unique identifier: DOI, which is collected form Crossref or journal website.

The retraction notice not only marks the official retraction of the article, but also provides valuable information for reason analyses. The complete retraction notices have been collected from journal website. The statements in these retraction notices have been consistently analyzed to summarize the reasons for retraction. In case of duplicate publications or plagiarism, cross-checking has been conducted by comparing the titles and authors of the references in the retraction notices. If there are common authors involved in the publication, it may be considered as duplicate publication rather than plagiarism. In addition to the retraction notice, recognizing the reasons for Paper Mill or AIGC also involves referring to the list of suspicious articles released on the websites such as For Better Science, Science Integrity Digest and Problematic Paper Screener.

After carefully reviewing journal retraction notices and consulting the definition of reasons for retraction in previous literature (Davis et al., 2007; Gilbert & Denison, 2003; Mousavi & Abdollahi, 2020; Sharma et al., 2023; Steen, 2011; Steneck, 2006), the reasons for retraction have been identified for each paper. These reasons can be categorized into different levels, each providing more specific details. Firstly, based on whether it was intentional or not, the reasons can be divided into two main categories: academic misconduct and honest errors. Secondly, academic misconduct can be further subdivided into 10 meso-level causes, while honest errors are categorized into two meso-level causes. Lastly, within each meso-level cause, there are multiple specific reasons for retraction. Please see the details below:

Categories of Reasons for Retraction:

Table 1 provides an overview of key characteristics within the Amend dataset. It encompasses 32,515 retracted papers, comprising 14,519 under Gold Open Access and 17,996 under non-Gold Open Access, all published and retracted between 1980 and 2023. Of these retracted papers, 26,620 (81.87%) were identified as cases of academic misconduct, including 13,487 Gold Open Access papers and 13,133 non-Gold Open Access papers. Notably, 92.89% of Gold Open Access papers and 72.98% of non-Gold Open Access papers were associated with academic misconduct.

During the selected period, the retraction rate in the Amend dataset accounted for 6.64 out of 10,000 papers for retracted papers. Furthermore, the retraction rate for misconduct papers in the Amend dataset was 5.44 out of 10,000 papers. For Gold Open Access papers, the retraction rate was 16.38 out of 10,000 papers for retracted papers and 15.21 for misconduct papers, both significantly higher than the overall rate. Conversely, for non-Gold Open Access papers, the retraction rate was 4.49 out of 10,000 papers for retracted papers and 3.28 for misconduct papers, both notably lower than that of Gold Open Access papers.

Of the retractions, 81.87% were associated with various forms of academic misconduct, totaling 35,442 instances across 25,710 retractions related to misconduct, considering a single retracted paper may have multiple reasons. Specifically, 12,413 retracted papers were involved in Fake Peer-review, accounting for 35.02% of all reasons for misconduct, while 6,152 retractions were related to duplication. More details can be found in Table 2.

Furthermore, through the integration of the Amend dataset with WoS, we have identified 143,783 researchers affiliated with 6,126 research institutions spanning 167 countries or regions. The retracted papers within the Amend dataset were published across 4,680 journals by 622 publishers and cover a diverse range of topics, including 10 macro topics, 324 meso topics, and 2,279 micro topics. These retracted papers received funding from 635 different agencies, including prominent organizations such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the USA, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan (MEXT), the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, UK Research & Innovation (UKRI), the German Research Foundation (DFG), the National Research Foundation of Korea, among others.

Recent years have witnessed a notable increase in the number of retractions, consistent with previous research findings (Bar-Ilan & Halevi, 2018; Van Noorden, 2023). Specifically, the number of retractions in 2023 has exceeded 12,100, primarily attributed to extensive retractions by Hindawi. This figure represents a staggering fifteen-fold increase compared to a decade ago. Among these retractions, over 11,700 were due to academic misconduct, with more than 9,700 being Gold Open Access papers (Figure. 1 (a)).

Figure 1.

Additionally, the number of retractions has surged concerning the publication year in recent years. More than 8,300 papers published in 2022 have been retracted, marking an approximate nine-fold increase compared to a decade ago. Among these retractions, over 8,000 were attributed to academic misconduct, with more than 7,500 being Gold Open Access papers (Figure. 1 (b)).

Although retractions still represent a small fraction of all publications (0.066%), the overall retraction rate, which measures the number of retractions relative to the number of newly published journal articles in a given year, has been on the rise. Figure 2 illustrates the annual retraction rate, depicting a rapid escalation indicating retractions are expanding more rapidly than the growth of scientific papers. Notably, the overall retraction rate surpasses 30 per 10,000 papers. It’s worth noting that the retraction rate for gold open access papers exceeds 60, double the overall retraction rate.

Figure 2.

To delve deeper into the reasons for retraction, the river chart illustrates the distribution of various reasons for each year (see Figure. 3). Before 2010, academic misconduct was primarily associated with fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, and duplication, typically considered occasional personal behaviors. While there has been a slight increase in recent years, these reasons have generally remained stable. However, the emergence of organized large-scale fraud has introduced new forms of academic misconduct, such as Paper Mill, Fake Peer-review, and AIGC, resulting in a significant number of retractions. For instance, the number of articles retracted due to Fake Peer-review was only 10 in 2010, but by 2022, it had surged to over 7,500. Similarly, the count of papers retracted due to AIGC has risen from 4 in 2010 to over 500 in 2021 (Table 3). Due to delays in retraction processing, the number of retracted papers published in 2023 is relatively small.

Figure 3.