Retraction Watch

An independent, non-CASRAI nonprofit project — a blog plus the Retraction Watch Database — that identifies, documents, and publicly reports individual retractions, expressions of concern, and corrections across the scholarly literature. It aggregates and investigates after a publisher's own retraction decision; it has no editorial or regulatory authority to retract anything itself.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 16 Jul 2026

Worked examples

Is an instance

A DOI's Retraction Watch Database entry — now also surfaced through Crossref's REST API '/works' route since the September 2023 Crossref–Center for Scientific Integrity data-sharing agreement — showing the retraction notice date and a reason category such as 'data fabrication' or 'duplicate publication'.

Is an instance

A Retraction Watch blog post investigating why a specific paper was pulled, published independently of, and sometimes ahead of, the journal's own formal retraction notice.

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance

The retraction notice itself, issued by the journal or publisher under guidance such as COPE's Retraction Guidelines — Retraction Watch indexes and reports on these notices; it does not issue them.

Not an instance

COPE's Retraction Guidelines — a policy/process standard for editors deciding whether and how to retract, not a tracking database or news outlet.

Retraction Watch is an independent, editorially separate nonprofit project — not a CASRAI initiative, a publisher, or a research-integrity regulator — that tracks, documents, and reports on retractions, expressions of concern, and corrections in the scholarly literature. It has two linked parts: the Retraction Watch blog (daily reporting and investigative coverage of individual cases) and the Retraction Watch Database (a structured, searchable index of retraction records).

Who runs it

Retraction Watch was launched in August 2010 by science journalists Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus. It is operated today by the Center for Scientific Integrity, a US 501(c)(3) nonprofit formed to house the project. CASRAI has no institutional, financial, or governance relationship with Retraction Watch or the Center for Scientific Integrity — it is cited on this site strictly as an external resource, the same way CASRAI content cites other independent bodies working in research integrity, such as cOAlition S or COPE.

The Retraction Watch Database and its Crossref integration

The Retraction Watch Database is the project’s core dataset: a curated, per-record index of retracted, corrected, and concern-flagged articles, whose creation was funded in part by a 2015 MacArthur Foundation grant. In September 2023, Crossref and the Center for Scientific Integrity announced a data-sharing agreement that made the database openly and freely accessible through Crossref’s REST API — retraction data now appears directly on the relevant DOI’s /works record instead of requiring a separate license or manual lookup. Crossref and the Center for Scientific Integrity remain organizationally separate under the agreement: Crossref distributes and hosts the combined data, while Retraction Watch continues its independent reporting and keeps the underlying records updated. See CASRAI’s guide to how a retraction actually happens for where this integration sits in the end-to-end editorial and Crossmark workflow.

What it is not

Retraction Watch does not retract anything itself and has no formal editorial or regulatory authority over any journal or publisher. The decision to retract, and the retraction notice itself, comes from the journal or publisher, typically under guidance such as COPE’s Retraction Guidelines — see the Retraction dictionary entry. Retraction Watch’s role is aggregation and reporting after that decision has been made, distinct from a correction (corrigendum) or an expression of concern — the publisher-issued notice types Retraction Watch tracks.

Related CASRAI content

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Retraction Watch"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/retraction-watch" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/retraction-watch",
  "name": "Retraction Watch",
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  "description": "An independent, non-CASRAI nonprofit project — a blog plus the Retraction Watch Database — that identifies, documents, and publicly reports individual retractions, expressions of concern, and corrections across the scholarly literature. It aggregates and investigates after a publisher's own retraction decision; it has no editorial or regulatory authority to retract anything itself.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/research-integrity#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/retraction-watch",
  "sameAs": [
    "Retraction Watch Database"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-07-16T07:41:21",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}