CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: questionable research practices

  • Research Misconduct vs Misbehaviour: FFP vs QRPs

    Research misconduct is a narrow, formally sanctionable transgression — fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism (FFP) committed intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly — while research misbehaviour is the much broader, informally policed category of questionable research practices (QRPs) that fall short of that threshold but still corrode trust in the research record. Confusing the two matters: one triggers a formal investigation and possible dismissal or retraction; the other typically triggers correction, training, or an editorial note.

    This distinction between research misbehavior and research misconduct is not academic hair-splitting. Regulators, universities, funders, and journal editors all apply a threshold test before they open a formal case, and where that line sits differs by jurisdiction. Research misconduct is fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in proposing, performing, reviewing, or reporting research, committed with intent, knowledge, or recklessness — a definition codified in the United States under 42 CFR Part 93 and echoed, with local variation, across UK, European, and international frameworks.

    What is research misconduct? The formal FFP test

    Research misconduct has a narrow, legalistic definition. In the United States, the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) — part of the Department of Health and Human Services — defines it under 42 CFR Part 93 as fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in proposing, performing, or reviewing research, or in reporting research results. Each term is precisely scoped: fabrication is making up data or results and recording or reporting them; falsification is manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing or omitting data so the research record is misrepresented; plagiarism is appropriating another person’s ideas, processes, results, or words without appropriate credit.

    Crucially, ORI’s definition explicitly excludes honest error or genuine differences of opinion. A finding of misconduct also requires that the act was committed intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly — not through a documented, defensible mistake. This intent threshold is what separates misconduct from misbehaviour, and it is the single fact most competitor explainers state without ever mapping it against a second jurisdiction.

    What is research misbehaviour? Where QRPs fit

    Research misbehaviour is an umbrella term for actions that deviate from responsible research practice without meeting the fabrication-falsification-plagiarism bar. It is most often used interchangeably with “questionable research practices” (QRPs) — a term formalised in the UK’s Concordat to Support Research Integrity, first published by Universities UK in 2012 and revised in 2019, which defines QRPs as “minor infractions or research practices, including avoidable errors, which fall short of the definition of intentional research misconduct.”

    Common QRPs include selective reporting of favourable results, “p-hacking” data until a significant finding emerges, HARKing (presenting a post-hoc hypothesis as though it were pre-registered), salami-slicing a single dataset into multiple papers, and inappropriate authorship allocation. A 2009 meta-analysis by Daniele Fanelli, published in PLoS ONE, found that on average only 1.97% of surveyed scientists admitted to fabricating or falsifying data at least once — but up to 33.7% admitted to other questionable research practices, and the figure rose sharply when respondents were asked about colleagues’ behaviour rather than their own. That roughly seventeen-fold gap is the empirical case for treating misbehaviour as a distinct, much larger risk surface than misconduct.

    Authorship disputes sit squarely in this grey zone. CASRAI originated the CRediT contributor role taxonomy in 2014. The standard is now stewarded by NISO as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022, and consistent use of its CRediT contributor roles is one of the more effective structural fixes institutions have for the ghost- and guest-authorship misbehaviours that recur in authorship disputes.

    How do regulators draw the line?

    No single global definition governs the misconduct/misbehaviour boundary. Each major framework sets its own threshold language, and the differences are consequential for cross-border collaborations and multi-national author teams.

    Framework / body Core threshold language Legal or policy basis Standard of intent
    US Office of Research Integrity (ORI) Fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism (FFP) 42 CFR Part 93 Intentional, knowing, or reckless
    UK Concordat to Support Research Integrity “Behaviours that deliberately or recklessly fall short of the standards expected” Universities UK Concordat (2012, rev. 2019) Deliberate or reckless
    World Health Organization “Wrongdoing” — FFP plus misrepresentation and other fraudulent behaviour WHO Code of Conduct for Research Intentional, knowing, or reckless
    Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Overlapping guidance distinguishing retraction-triggering misconduct from correction-triggering QRPs COPE flowcharts and guidelines for editors Proportionate to severity and evidence

    Notice the pattern: every framework anchors misconduct to intent or recklessness, and every framework treats everything short of that — errors, sloppy practice, grey-zone shortcuts — as a separate, lower-tier category, whether it is called a QRP, an “avoidable error,” or simply “wrongdoing” of a lesser kind.

    What happens after a finding? Sanctions compared

    The practical consequence of the misconduct/misbehaviour distinction is procedural. A misconduct finding typically follows a formal, panel-based investigation and can result in retraction, funding debarment, employment termination, or referral to a professional regulator. A misbehaviour or QRP finding more commonly results in a correction to the published record, mandatory training, enhanced supervision, or an editorial expression of concern — remedial rather than punitive action.

    • Misconduct outcomes: retraction, debarment from funding, dismissal, professional sanction, referral to law enforcement in extreme cases.
    • Misbehaviour/QRP outcomes: correction or erratum, mandatory research-integrity training, revised authorship credit, closer supervisory oversight.
    • Shared consequence: both can damage institutional reputation and require correction of the scholarly record, which is why UKRIO and equivalent bodies investigate both under a shared procedural umbrella even though the findings differ.

    Research institutions and research administration offices increasingly triage complaints against this two-tier structure before deciding whether a matter warrants a full misconduct panel or a lighter-touch integrity review — a proportionality principle that COPE explicitly recommends to journal editors handling post-publication concerns.

    Common questions about misconduct and misbehaviour

    What are the three types of research misconduct?

    Under the US federal definition, the three types are fabrication (inventing data or results), falsification (manipulating processes or altering data so the record misrepresents what occurred), and plagiarism (appropriating others’ ideas, words, or results without credit). Together these form the FFP standard used by ORI and mirrored internationally.

    What are the five unethical practices most often cited in research ethics literature?

    A widely cited framework lists falsification of data, failure to credit others, plagiarism, undisclosed conflicts of interest, and biased design or interpretation driven by outside influence. Some of these meet the formal misconduct threshold; others, like undisclosed conflicts, more often sit in the misbehaviour category depending on intent and severity.

    What is research misbehaviour, precisely?

    Research misbehaviour is any deviation from responsible research conduct — including questionable research practices and avoidable errors — that falls short of intentional fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism. It is a broader, less formally policed category than misconduct, typically addressed through correction and training rather than disciplinary panels.

    What actions count as research misconduct in UK institutional policy?

    UK institutional policies, following the Concordat to Support Research Integrity, typically list plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, breaching ethical or legal research requirements, proceeding without required approvals, and failing to manage conflicts of interest as research misconduct, provided the conduct was deliberate or reckless rather than an honest error.

    Implications for institutions and research administrators

    For research administrators, publishers, and funders, the practical task is triage: distinguishing an honest error or a QRP from conduct that meets the intent threshold for a formal misconduct investigation, before committing to a resource-intensive panel process. Institutions that document this distinction clearly in their code of practice — and train staff and early-career researchers on where the line sits — reduce both the number of misdirected formal investigations and the risk of under-reacting to genuine misconduct.

    As research-integrity offices, funders, and publishers converge on shared vocabulary for this spectrum, consistent taxonomy work — from CRediT-style contributor attribution to standardised institutional definitions — will keep doing more to prevent misbehaviour from escalating into misconduct than any single enforcement action can.

  • Editorial Expression of Concern vs Retraction

    An editorial expression of concern is a notice a journal publishes to flag credible but unresolved doubts about a paper’s reliability, without retracting it. Editors use it instead of a retraction when the evidence is inconclusive, an institutional investigation is ongoing, or a fair resolution will take months rather than weeks.

    An editorial expression of concern (sometimes abbreviated EEoC) is defined by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) as a journal notice about potential misconduct or unreliable findings, issued when the available evidence does not yet meet the threshold for a correction or a retraction. It sits deliberately between silence and withdrawal — a middle mechanism the scholarly record uses to signal risk without pre-judging guilt.

    What is an editorial expression of concern?

    An editorial expression of concern is a public, freely accessible notice — linked bidirectionally to the article it concerns — that tells readers a paper’s integrity is in question. Wikipedia’s entry on the topic describes it simply as “a notice issued by a publisher against a particular publication, warning that it may contain errors or be otherwise untrustworthy,” citing Morris, Barnas, LaFrenier and Reich’s Handbook of Journal Publishing (Cambridge University Press, 2013).

    Crucially, an expression of concern does not itself amend the scientific record. The original article remains published, unaltered, alongside the notice. It is a flag, not a verdict — and that distinction is precisely why journals reach for it before they reach for a retraction.

    Expression of concern vs retraction: what’s the difference?

    A retraction is a formal withdrawal: editors have concluded, on clear grounds, that a paper’s findings are unreliable because of fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, an invalidating honest error, or an unresolved ethical breach. COPE’s Retraction Guidelines (Version 3, 2025) set out the timing, content and evidentiary bar for that step. A retraction changes how the article is labelled in perpetuity; it does not usually remove the text, but it marks it as withdrawn from the reliable literature.

    An expression of concern makes no such finding. It is an interim or, occasionally, a terminal notice used precisely because the evidence does not yet support — or may never support — a definitive retraction decision. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), in its December 2019 recommendations on “Scientific Misconduct, Expressions of Concern, and Retraction,” acknowledges that a publisher may issue an expression of concern while a misconduct investigation is ongoing, and pending its outcome, rather than waiting in silence or retracting prematurely.

    Feature Expression of concern Retraction
    Evidence threshold Inconclusive or investigation ongoing Clear grounds established
    Effect on the article Article stands, flagged with a linked notice Article marked withdrawn from the record
    Typical trigger Credible allegation, pending institutional inquiry Confirmed fabrication, falsification, plagiarism or invalidating error
    Finality Interim — or occasionally the final outcome if no further update is expected Final

    When does COPE say editors should issue one?

    COPE’s dedicated guideline on expressions of concern gives editors concrete criteria. It states that editors should consider issuing an expression of concern if significant and credible concerns have been raised but the evidence is unclear as to whether the work, or parts of it, are potentially unreliable — whether from error, incorrect analysis, or research-integrity concerns affecting the main findings.

    Other qualifying scenarios include:

    • An institutional, funding, or other formal oversight investigation is ongoing and may lead to corrections based on the work’s reliability.
    • Authors have been asked for additional information to address concerns, and it is not immediately available.
    • There is an unresolved breach of journal or publisher policy — for example, data that were available at publication but later withheld.
    • A resolution is not expected for some time, typically several months.

    COPE is equally clear about when an expression of concern is not appropriate: if the editor can quickly reach a decision, if resolution is only weeks away, if the main findings remain reliable, or if the sole concern relates to authorship rather than the underlying findings. Publishing a notice that will be superseded within weeks risks confusing readers rather than informing them.

    Corrigendum vs erratum vs expression of concern: where each notice fits

    Expressions of concern sit alongside — but are distinct from — the more routine correction notices journals issue. In standard publishing practice, a corrigendum is a correction initiated by the authors themselves to fix an error they introduced (a wrong affiliation, a miscalculated value, an omitted co-author), while an erratum corrects a mistake introduced by the publisher during production or typesetting — the classic corrigendum vs erratum distinction. Neither implies a reliability concern about the underlying findings; both simply amend the published record.

    The National Information Standards Organization’s 2024 recommended practice, NISO RP-45-2024, “Communication of Retractions, Removals, and Expressions of Concern (CREC),” formalises how publishers and indexers should structure and disseminate these various post-publication notices so that the scholarly record — and the systems that index it — stay consistent across platforms.

    Notice type Who initiates it What it signals Effect on the record
    Corrigendum Authors Author-side error in an otherwise sound paper Text amended; original findings stand
    Erratum Publisher Production or typesetting error Text amended; original findings stand
    Expression of concern Editors/publisher Credible, unresolved doubt about reliability Article stands, flagged pending outcome
    Retraction Editors/publisher Confirmed unreliability or misconduct Article marked withdrawn

    Related questionable research practices — undisclosed image manipulation, salami-slicing, or selective reporting — often surface first through post-publication scrutiny on platforms such as PubPeer, which can prompt an editor to move from silence toward one of these four notice types.

    Frequently asked questions

    What is an editorial expression of concern?

    An editorial expression of concern is a notice issued by editors or a publisher to draw attention to potential problems in a published paper, without itself constituting a retraction or a correction. It flags unresolved doubt while the article remains part of the published record.

    What is an example of when an expression of concern applies?

    COPE gives the example of an editor receiving inconclusive evidence of misconduct, or learning that findings appear unreliable but the authors’ institution declines to investigate. In both cases, the concern is credible but not yet provable, so a flag — not a withdrawal — is the appropriate response.

    What is the difference between an expression of concern and a retraction?

    An expression of concern is a provisional flag issued when evidence is incomplete; a retraction is a final, formal withdrawal issued once editors have established clear grounds — fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, or an invalidating error. One pauses judgement; the other delivers it.

    Is Retraction Watch a credible source for tracking these notices?

    Retraction Watch is widely cited by researchers, journalists and integrity officers as a tracking resource and maintains a large public database of retractions. It is a secondary aggregator, not a standards body — for authoritative process guidance, COPE, ICMJE and NISO remain the primary reference sources.

    Implications for institutions, publishers and researchers

    For research administrators and institutional integrity officers, an expression of concern on a faculty member’s paper is not proof of misconduct — but it is a signal that warrants tracking, particularly where funding, promotion, or REF-style assessment exercises depend on the work’s standing. Institutions should distinguish, in their own case-management records, between papers carrying a corrigendum or erratum (routine) and those carrying an expression of concern (an active, unresolved integrity question).

    For publishers and journal editors, COPE’s criteria function as a due-process safeguard: they prevent both premature retraction, which can unfairly damage careers, and prolonged silence, which leaves readers citing potentially unreliable findings unwarned. NISO RP-45-2024’s structured communication requirements push this further, aiming to make expressions of concern discoverable wherever an article is indexed, not just on the publisher’s own site.

    As post-publication scrutiny — via PubPeer, institutional audits, and journal-side data checks — continues to intensify, expressions of concern are likely to become a more visible, more standardised fixture of the published record, sitting permanently between the routine correction and the definitive retraction.

  • Research Misconduct Examples: Why Reports Hide

    Research misconduct examples are well documented in scholarly literature and case databases, but the investigation reports that actually establish them almost never reach the public. In the UK and the US, institutions overwhelmingly keep findings, evidence and reasoning confidential even after a case closes — a practice that a small number of national bodies elsewhere have abandoned in favour of publishing final rulings.

    Research misconduct is fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in proposing, performing, reviewing, or reporting research, as defined by the US Office of Research Integrity under 42 CFR Part 93. That definition is narrow by design. It is also, this piece argues, too often the only thing the public is allowed to see — the “what” without the “how we know.”

    What is research misconduct? Definitions and examples

    Fabrication, falsification and plagiarism — FFP — form the internationally recognised core of research misconduct, used by the US Office of Research Integrity (ORI), the UK Research Integrity Office (UKRIO), and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Fabrication means inventing data or results outright. Falsification means manipulating materials, equipment, images or data so the record misrepresents what actually happened. Plagiarism means presenting someone else’s ideas, data or words as one’s own without attribution.

    Beyond the FFP core, most UK institutional policies and UKRIO’s own guidance extend coverage to related breaches that damage the research record without always meeting the strict fabrication-falsification-plagiarism test:

    • Undisclosed conflicts of interest that could plausibly bias findings or peer review
    • Inappropriate authorship — denying credit to real contributors or granting it to non-contributors, a problem CASRAI’s contributor-role work in CRediT was originally built to address
    • Redundant or “salami-sliced” publication of the same dataset across multiple papers
    • Manipulation of the peer-review process, including fabricated reviewer identities
    • Paper-mill involvement — buying or selling fraudulent manuscripts dressed as original research

    Retraction Watch’s public database tracks the downstream signal of these failures — the retraction itself — but a retraction notice rarely explains what an investigation found. That gap between “a paper was retracted” and “here is the evidence” is the transparency problem this article addresses.

    Why do institutions keep investigation reports confidential?

    UK and US institutions cite broadly consistent reasons for withholding full reports, and some are genuinely legitimate. None justifies blanket non-disclosure once a case is closed and a finding is made.

    • Personnel-record status. Many US institutions classify misconduct files as personnel records, exempting them from public-records requests even at public universities.
    • Whistleblower protection. Confidentiality during an inquiry is defensible — it protects the person who raised the concern from retaliation while facts are established.
    • Reputational risk to the accused. Institutions worry that publishing findings, even redacted ones, will follow a researcher regardless of outcome.
    • Litigation exposure. Legal teams treat investigation reports as liability documents first and research-integrity documents second.
    • No statutory disclosure duty. Unlike the US, where ORI’s federal oversight of Public Health Service-funded research creates a disclosure mechanism, the UK has no national body with investigatory or publication powers.

    The UK’s 2019 Concordat to Support Research Integrity, coordinated by Universities UK, commits signatory institutions to publish an annual statement on how many misconduct allegations they received and investigated. It does not require publication of the underlying reports. This is the crux of the transparency debate: aggregate counts satisfy the letter of accountability while the substance — what was actually found, and how — stays locked in a drawer.

    The US system looks more transparent at first glance because ORI’s Case Summaries register is genuinely public. Read the fine print, though, and the scope narrows sharply: it covers only Public Health Service-funded research, only cases where ORI itself made a finding (institutions handle the great majority internally, without ORI referral), and only researchers currently serving an active administrative sanction — historical entries are removed once the sanction period expires.

    How do more transparent regimes handle disclosure?

    A handful of national systems have made a different bet: that publishing final misconduct decisions, with personal data appropriately redacted, strengthens rather than undermines trust in the research system.

    Jurisdiction Body Investigation outcomes published? Legal basis
    Denmark Danish Committees on Research Misconduct (Nævnet for Videnskabelig Uredelighed) Yes — final decisions published, with case facts, on a rolling basis Danish Act on Research Misconduct (2017)
    Norway National Commission for the Investigation of Research Misconduct (Granskingsutvalget) Yes — decisions published since the commission became operational in 2022 Research Ethics Act (2017, amended)
    Netherlands National Board for Research Integrity (LOWI) Advisory opinions published in anonymised form Netherlands Code of Conduct for Research Integrity
    United States Office of Research Integrity (ORI) Partial — case summaries for PHS-funded, ORI-adjudicated findings only 42 CFR Part 93
    United Kingdom None national; institutions decide individually Rare — annual aggregate statistics only, per the Concordat to Support Research Integrity No statutory research-misconduct framework

    Denmark and Norway share a structural feature the UK and US both lack: a single national committee with statutory authority to investigate and to publish. That centralisation removes the conflict of interest built into the UK and US model, where the institution investigating its own researcher is also the institution deciding whether the findings ever see daylight.

    What does the secrecy cost — and what should change?

    Withholding investigation reports has three concrete costs. First, it prevents the research community from learning the specific mechanics of a case — which is precisely what field-level prevention requires. A retraction notice reading “concerns about data integrity” teaches almost nothing; a published finding detailing exactly which images were duplicated, or which patient records were invented, teaches a field how the fraud was constructed and how it was caught.

    Second, it fuels distrust in the institutions research administrators run. When a case surfaces only through journalism or a whistleblower’s own account — rather than the institution’s — the institution looks like it concealed wrongdoing rather than corrected it, whatever the reality.

    Third, it weakens deterrence. Sanctions that never become public carry a materially smaller reputational cost, changing the incentive calculation for researchers weighing whether to cut corners.

    None of this requires abandoning legitimate protections. A workable model — closer to Denmark’s than the UK’s current default — would:

    1. Publish final findings only, after due process concludes, never mid-investigation
    2. Redact personal data unrelated to the finding itself, while naming the researcher where a finding of misconduct is confirmed and sanctioned, consistent with COPE’s retraction guidelines
    3. Separate the publication decision from the investigating institution, ideally through a national or sector body — the role UKRIO could grow into if given statutory footing
    4. Require research integrity offices to log outcomes in a format compatible with existing registries, including Retraction Watch’s database and journals’ own correction records

    UKRIO’s current remit is advisory, not investigatory — it cannot compel disclosure. Extending it, or creating a UK equivalent of Denmark’s committee, would close the gap between the UK’s stated commitment to research integrity and its practice of keeping the evidence for that commitment confidential.

    Common questions on research misconduct

    What counts as research misconduct?

    Research misconduct is fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in proposing, performing, reviewing, or reporting research. It excludes honest error and genuine differences of scientific opinion. UK guidance from the UK Research Integrity Office also treats undisclosed conflicts of interest and data manipulation as misconduct.

    What are the three types of research misconduct?

    The three internationally recognised types are fabrication (inventing data), falsification (manipulating materials or altering results), and plagiarism (presenting others’ work as one’s own). This FFP framework, used by ORI and COPE, deliberately excludes honest error and normal scientific disagreement.

    What is considered the most serious form of research misconduct?

    Fabrication is generally treated as the most severe form because it invents an entire dataset or result rather than distorting a real one. In practice, sanctions are often harshest for falsification in clinical or biomedical research, where fabricated or altered findings carry direct patient-safety consequences.

    Investigation-report secrecy is a policy choice, not a technical necessity. Denmark and Norway show that publication and due process are compatible; the UK’s Concordat shows that aggregate transparency, absent case-level disclosure, is not the same thing as accountability. Research administrators and research integrity offices weighing their own disclosure policy now have a working alternative model to point to, not just a set of reasons to say no.

  • Retraction Watch by Country: Governance Gaps

    Retraction Watch’s per-country data shows that national retraction rates vary far more once population and publication output are accounted for: Saudi Arabia (30.6 retractions per 10,000 papers), Pakistan (28.1) and Russia (24.9) rank highest by rate, while China and the United States lead only in absolute counts — a gap that reflects research-integrity governance maturity, not misconduct volume alone.

    Retraction Watch is a Crossref-stewarded database and blog that has logged more than 65,000 scientific paper retractions since its 2010 launch, making it the primary open dataset for cross-country research-integrity comparison.

    Which Countries Have the Highest Retraction Rates?

    When retractions are normalised against publication volume, the country leaderboard changes completely. A 2025 bibliometric analysis by John Ioannidis and colleagues, published on PubMed Central, calculated retractions per 10,000 papers and found Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Russia and China at the top of the rate-adjusted table — a different set of countries from those that dominate raw retraction counts.

    Country Retractions per 10,000 papers Source
    Saudi Arabia 30.6 Ioannidis et al., 2025 (PMC)
    Pakistan 28.1 Ioannidis et al., 2025 (PMC)
    Russia 24.9 Ioannidis et al., 2025 (PMC)
    China 23.5 Ioannidis et al., 2025 (PMC)

    A separate 2025 study by Sebo, published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, reached a broadly consistent conclusion using a different, population-adjusted method: Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Serbia, Taiwan and Russia ranked highest overall once national population size was factored in. The overlap between two independently constructed methodologies — output-adjusted and population-adjusted — is itself notable: it suggests the pattern is structural rather than an artefact of one counting method.

    Absolute Counts vs Per-Capita Rates: Why the Rankings Flip

    China and the United States generate the largest raw number of retractions simply because they publish the most papers. That volume effect masks rate differences that matter far more for governance analysis. A country publishing 500,000 papers a year with a modest retraction rate will still out-rank, in absolute terms, a smaller research system with a genuinely higher rate of misconduct-driven withdrawal.

    Retraction Watch’s own 2014 analysis of PubMed-indexed retractions illustrates the same point by cause rather than by count. It found Tunisia (42.9%) and France (38.5%) had the highest shares of retractions attributed to plagiarism, while Finland recorded the highest duplicate-publication rate at 37.5%, ahead of China at 29.4%. Different countries are not just retracting at different rates — they are retracting for structurally different reasons, which points to different weak points in local research governance.

    • High absolute counts (China, US, India) largely track publication volume.
    • High per-capita or per-output rates (Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Russia) point to systemic pressure or detection gaps.
    • High single-cause shares (Tunisia’s plagiarism rate, Finland’s duplicate-publication rate) point to a specific, addressable failure mode rather than broad misconduct.

    What Retraction Rates Reveal About Governance Gaps

    No country operates a statutory national registry that tracks retractions the way Retraction Watch’s database does. The Retraction Watch Database was acquired by Crossref, a scholarly infrastructure non-profit, in September 2023 — meaning the closest thing the research sector has to a global retraction record is run by a metadata organisation, not a government regulator. That is itself a governance gap: national research-integrity oversight is fragmented and largely advisory.

    The US Office of Research Integrity investigates federally funded misconduct but has no jurisdiction over most published retractions. The UK Research Integrity Office (UKRIO) provides advisory guidance to institutions but holds no statutory enforcement power. The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) sets retraction guidelines that member journals agree to follow voluntarily, but COPE membership itself is not mandatory for publishers. Where a national system pairs strong institutional oversight with active journal-level detection — features associated with mature research-administration infrastructure — retraction rates tend to reflect correction rather than concealment.

    This is where research-integrity governance infrastructure becomes the real variable behind the country data: rate differences correlate as much with how actively a system finds and corrects problems as with how often problems occur in the first place.

    A 2025 conference analysis presented at the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics (ISSI) found that Ethiopia recorded the highest retraction-notice rate of the 2022-2024 period among countries with substantial publication volume — a marked shift from the historical China/Russia/Middle East concentration and a data point that has had little mainstream coverage to date. The finding aligns with a broader trend documented across the sector: mass retractions driven by “paper mills” — commercial operations that sell fabricated manuscripts and authorship slots — have pushed retraction volumes up sharply in emerging research systems since 2023, as journals and Crossref-linked tools improve detection.

    This matters for how the country data should be read. A rising national retraction rate in 2024-2026 is increasingly a signal of improved detection infrastructure catching paper-mill output, not proof that misconduct itself is rising at the same pace. Distinguishing the two requires looking at retraction reason codes, not just headline counts — exactly the kind of research misconduct terminology and classification work that under-resourced national systems still lack.

    Common Questions About Retraction Watch by Country

    What is the Retraction Watch?

    Retraction Watch is a blog and database project launched in 2010 by Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus that catalogues retracted scientific papers. Its Retraction Watch Database, now holding over 65,000 retraction records, was acquired by Crossref in September 2023 and remains the largest public source of country-level retraction data.

    Is Retraction Watch credible?

    Yes. Retraction Watch is widely cited in peer-reviewed bibliometric research, including studies in the Journal of Medical Internet Research and work by researchers such as John Ioannidis. Its database is now maintained by Crossref, a scholarly infrastructure non-profit, which strengthens its provenance and reliability as a citation source.

    Is retraction good or bad?

    Neither, in isolation. Under COPE’s retraction guidelines, a retraction exists to correct the scholarly record, not to punish authors. A rising national retraction count can reflect worsening misconduct, or it can reflect a maturing research-integrity governance system that is actively detecting and correcting errors.

    How do I check if an article is retracted?

    Search the paper’s DOI or title in the Retraction Watch Database at retractiondatabase.org, or check Crossref’s metadata, which flags retraction notices directly. Reference managers such as Zotero can also cross-check saved libraries against retraction data and alert users automatically when a cited work has been withdrawn.

    Implications for Research Administrators

    For institutional leaders and research-administration teams, country-level retraction data is a governance diagnostic, not a scorecard. A high rate should prompt questions about detection capacity, journal partnerships, and institutional misconduct policy — not assumptions about researcher character. A low rate, in a system with weak journal oversight, may simply mean fewer problems are being found.

    As paper-mill-driven retractions continue to reshape the 2022-2026 data, the countries and institutions that invest in retraction-reason classification, COPE-aligned editorial policy, and Crossref-linked metadata infrastructure will be the ones whose retraction rates can be trusted as a genuine integrity signal rather than a detection artefact.

  • Questionable Research Practices vs Misconduct: Where Institutions Draw the Line

    Questionable research practices (QRPs) are not research misconduct, and treating them as identical is where institutional triage goes wrong. Misconduct — fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism (FFP) — requires intent and a formal proof standard; QRPs such as p-hacking, HARKing, and selective reporting occupy a wider grey zone that most institutions route through a separate, lower-intensity process.

    A questionable research practice is a research or reporting behaviour that deviates from rigorous methodological or ethical norms without meeting the legal definition of fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism. The distinction matters because it determines which procedural track — and which evidentiary burden — an institution applies to a complaint.

    What counts as a questionable research practice?

    QRPs cluster around the design, analysis, and reporting stages of a study. The most cited taxonomy comes from an incentivised self-report survey published in Psychological Science (John, Loewenstein & Prelec, 2012), which found admission rates for practices such as selectively reporting studies “that worked” approaching 50% — far higher than admitted rates of outright data fabrication, which stayed under 2%. That gap is itself the argument for treating QRPs as a distinct governance problem rather than a rare edge case of misconduct.

    • P-hacking (data dredging): running multiple analyses or exclusion criteria until a result reaches statistical significance, then reporting only that version.
    • HARKing: presenting a post hoc, exploratory finding as though it were the pre-specified hypothesis.
    • Selective/cherry-picked reporting: omitting non-significant outcomes, conditions, or measures from the published record.
    • Salami slicing: splitting one dataset into the minimum publishable units to inflate output count.
    • Honorary or ghost authorship: crediting non-contributors or omitting contributors, which is why standardised contributor role disclosure matters for accountability.
    • Inadequate data retention: failing to keep raw data, code, or protocols available for verification.

    How do QRPs differ from research misconduct?

    Under US federal policy (42 CFR Part 93, administered by the Office of Research Integrity), research misconduct is defined narrowly as fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in proposing, performing, or reviewing research, or in reporting results. Three conditions must all be met: a significant departure from accepted practices, intentional/knowing/reckless conduct, and proof by a preponderance of the evidence. The same regulation explicitly excludes “honest error” and “differences of opinion” from the misconduct definition — which is precisely the space most QRPs occupy.

    UK guidance frames the same boundary differently but reaches a similar conclusion. UKRIO’s 2023 guidance by Simon Kolstoe, “Defining the Spectrum of Questionable Research Practices,” describes a continuum running from honest error and sloppiness through to QRPs and, at the far end, fabrication, falsification, and criminality — with no single fixed cut-off point.

    Dimension Questionable research practice Research misconduct (FFP)
    Intent required Not required — may be unintentional, driven by pressure or ignorance Must be intentional, knowing, or reckless
    Governing definition No single legal definition; institutional/disciplinary norms 42 CFR Part 93 (US); institutional misconduct policy (UK/EU)
    Standard of proof Not applicable — assessed for pattern/severity, not adjudicated Preponderance of the evidence
    Typical examples P-hacking, HARKing, selective reporting, salami slicing Fabricated data, altered images, verbatim plagiarism
    Usual institutional track Research governance, retraining, correction, departmental review Formal inquiry and investigation with findings and sanctions

    How do institutions triage an allegation?

    Under the ORI model that most US research institutions adopt, and which UK bodies broadly mirror in structure, a complaint moves through staged gates rather than a single up-or-down decision.

    1. Assessment: a Research Integrity Officer performs an initial review to establish whether, if the allegation were true, it would meet the FFP definition and falls within the institution’s jurisdiction. Concerns that describe sloppiness, honest error, or a QRP without evidence of intent are typically redirected here rather than escalated.
    2. Inquiry: a limited fact-finding step, conducted under 42 CFR Part 93 within 60 calendar days unless circumstances clearly warrant longer, to decide whether a full investigation is warranted.
    3. Investigation: a formal, evidence-gathering process triggered only once the inquiry finds a sufficient basis, applying the preponderance-of-evidence standard and producing a written report with findings.

    QRPs that do not clear the assessment gate are not dismissed outright — the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s 2017 report Fostering Integrity in Research proposed the term “detrimental research practices” specifically to argue that institutions need a formal, non-misconduct track for exactly this category, rather than either ignoring it or misapplying the misconduct process to it. COPE’s flowcharts for publishers follow the same logic: suspected fabrication routes to a formal investigation referral, while methodological concerns typically route to correction or expression-of-concern mechanisms first.

    Why does the distinction change institutional response?

    Misapplying the misconduct process to a QRP over-penalises ambiguous conduct and consumes scarce Research Integrity Officer capacity on cases that cannot meet the intent standard. Under-applying it — treating a concealed fabrication as “just” a QRP — lets a genuine breach evade the preponderance-of-evidence process entirely. Accurate triage at the assessment stage is therefore the single highest-leverage decision point in the entire allegation-handling pipeline, and it depends on evaluators being able to name the difference precisely rather than treating “research integrity concern” as one undifferentiated category.

    This is also why standardised terminology for research integrity concepts, and consistent research administration processes for logging and routing complaints, reduce inconsistent outcomes across departments within the same institution.

    Answer-first questions on QRPs and misconduct

    What is the difference between questionable research practices and research misconduct?

    Research misconduct is fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism committed intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly and proven by a preponderance of evidence under frameworks such as 42 CFR Part 93. QRPs are a broader, less severe category — practices like p-hacking or HARKing — that may be unintentional and do not meet the FFP definition.

    What are examples of questionable research practices?

    Common QRPs include p-hacking, HARKing, selective or cherry-picked reporting, salami slicing of datasets into multiple papers, inadequate record-keeping, and honorary or ghost authorship. None of these automatically constitutes misconduct unless deliberate concealment or fabrication can be demonstrated.

    Is p-hacking considered research misconduct?

    Generally no. P-hacking is classified as a questionable research practice because it typically reflects flawed analytical judgement or incentive pressure rather than deliberate fabrication. It can escalate to misconduct only if a researcher knowingly falsifies or conceals the analytic process to deceive reviewers.

    Who decides whether an allegation is misconduct or a questionable practice?

    A Research Integrity Officer (or institutional equivalent) makes this call at the assessment and inquiry stages, evaluating whether alleged conduct could meet the FFP definition before any formal investigation begins. This gatekeeping decision determines which procedural track and evidentiary standard apply.

    Where institutional policy is heading

    Recent scholarship — including a 2026 classification study in a leading research-ethics journal — continues to push toward more granular, ranked taxonomies of QRPs rather than a single undifferentiated label, reflecting growing recognition that “questionable research practice” spans behaviours of very different severity. For institutions, the practical implication is unchanged: allegation-handling policies need an explicit, documented triage step that distinguishes FFP-eligible conduct from the wider QRP category before any case enters a formal investigation track. Institutions that skip this step either over-invest in low-severity concerns or under-investigate the ones that matter.

  • Causes of Research Misconduct: Pressures, Metrics and Prevention

    What counts as research misconduct?

    Rising retraction counts and a steady stream of high-profile data-integrity cases have kept research misconduct on the agenda for research offices, funders and publishers well into 2026. The causes of research misconduct are rarely a single bad actor acting alone; they are usually a combination of individual choices and the incentive structures institutions build around publication, funding and promotion.

    The internationally recognised core definition, set out by the US Office of Research Integrity (ORI), covers three deliberate acts: fabrication (inventing data), falsification (manipulating data, materials or processes to misrepresent results), and plagiarism (using others’ ideas, words or results without credit) – together known as FFP. The UK Research Integrity Office (UKRIO) uses a broader definition that also captures breaches of ethical or legal obligations, such as unauthorised use of confidential data or failure to obtain proper approvals.

    FFP is distinct from questionable research practices (QRPs) – selective reporting, inappropriate authorship credit, or p-hacking – and from honest error. The distinction matters because prevention strategies differ: FFP requires deterrence and detection, while QRPs respond better to training, culture change and transparent reporting standards.

    The structural and incentive-driven causes of research misconduct

    A 2017 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report, Fostering Integrity in Research, grouped the drivers of misconduct into six overlapping categories: career and funding pressures, institutional failures of oversight, commercial conflicts of interest, inadequate training, erosion of mentoring standards, and misconduct as part of a wider pattern of deviant behaviour. Subsequent survey research has consistently pointed to the same structural pressures rather than isolated moral failure.

    Holtfreter et al. (2020), surveying academics on the perceived causes of misconduct, found that professional strains and stressors – particularly the pressure to secure competitive grant funding – were cited most often, ahead of individual psychological factors. This lines up with a widely cited earlier synthesis: Fanelli’s 2009 meta-analysis of survey data found that around 2% of scientists admitted to fabricating or falsifying data at least once, while up to a third admitted other questionable research practices – and both figures rose substantially when respondents were asked to estimate colleagues’ behaviour rather than report on their own.

    “Publish or perish” culture and metrics gaming sit at the centre of the structural explanation. When journal impact factor, h-index, publication counts and grant income are used as proxies for quality in hiring, tenure and national assessment exercises, researchers face direct incentives to inflate output rather than rigour. Davis (2003) categorised the underlying factors into three levels, which remains a useful frame for institutional leaders diagnosing where their own controls are weakest.

    Causal level Example factors Where responsibility sits
    Individual Career ambition, financial pressure, poor ethics training, psychological stress Researcher, supervisor
    Organisational Weak oversight, inadequate mentoring, metrics-driven promotion criteria, under-resourced integrity offices Institution, department
    Systemic Publish-or-perish funding models, journal impact-factor incentives, low probability of detection, weak sanctions Funders, publishers, national assessment bodies

    Two systemic factors deserve particular attention from research administrators: low detection probability and weak penalties. A web-search-grounded synthesis of current literature commissioned for this article converged on the same point – academics themselves believe that a low likelihood of investigation, combined with inconsistent sanctions once misconduct is confirmed, is a significant driver of continued misconduct. This is an institutional-design problem, not only an ethics-training problem.

    Quick answers: types, drivers and consequences

    What are the three main types of research misconduct?

    The three internationally recognised categories are fabrication (inventing data or results), falsification (manipulating data, materials or processes to misrepresent findings), and plagiarism (using others’ ideas or words without credit). Together these form the “FFP” definition used by ORI and most national integrity bodies.

    What are the reasons for unethical research?

    Reported reasons include career and funding pressures, institutional failures of oversight, commercial conflicts of interest, inadequate training in research ethics, erosion of mentoring standards, and – in a minority of cases – misconduct forming part of a broader pattern of deviant behaviour, per the National Academies’ 2017 analysis.

    What are the 5 unethical practices in conducting research?

    Commonly cited categories are falsification of data, failure to credit others, plagiarism, undisclosed conflicts of interest, and biased design or interpretation driven by outside influence. Authorship misconduct – including honorary and ghost authorship – is frequently added as a sixth practice in institutional policies.

    What are the 5 main ethical issues in research?

    Beyond FFP itself, institutions most often flag informed consent failures, conflicts of interest, data management and privacy breaches, authorship disputes, and inadequate oversight of research involving human or animal subjects as recurring ethical issues requiring governance attention.

    Evidence-based prevention strategies for institutional leaders

    Because the causes are structural as well as individual, effective prevention combines training with changes to incentive design. Institutional leaders following frameworks from COPE, UKRIO and the UK Concordat to Support Research Integrity typically prioritise the following:

    • Decouple assessment from raw output metrics. Reduce reliance on publication counts and journal impact factor in hiring, tenure and internal funding decisions, in line with responsible-metrics initiatives such as DORA.
    • Fund and empower a dedicated integrity office. A resourced office that can investigate allegations promptly – and is seen to do so – directly addresses the “low detection probability” driver identified in the literature.
    • Make authorship transparent and auditable. Structured, taxonomy-based contributor statements reduce opportunities for honorary and ghost authorship. CASRAI originated the CRediT contributor role taxonomy in 2014; the standard is now stewarded by NISO as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022, and its adoption by journals makes individual contributions explicit rather than assumed.
    • Strengthen mentoring and mandatory ethics training for early-career researchers, who are disproportionately exposed to supervision gaps.
    • Protect whistleblowers with clear, enforced anti-retaliation policies – a precondition for any self-reporting culture to function.
    • Apply consistent, proportionate sanctions once misconduct is confirmed, closing the gap between policy and enforcement that researchers themselves identify as a weakness.

    Implications for institutions, funders and publishers

    The practical implication is that misconduct prevention cannot sit solely within research ethics training. In 2023, Crossref and Retraction Watch partnered to integrate more than 43,000 retraction records into open, machine-readable metadata – a structural fix that makes retraction status discoverable at the point of citation, rather than relying on researchers to notice a correction years later. That kind of infrastructure-level intervention complements, rather than replaces, institutional oversight.

    For research administrators, the actionable shift is from a compliance mindset (“train researchers, then police them”) to a design mindset: audit which internal metrics reward speed over rigour, resource integrity offices adequately, and make authorship and contribution as transparent as data availability statements already are. Consult the CASRAI Dictionary for precise definitions when drafting or updating institutional misconduct policy, and review authorship guidance where disputes over credit are a recurring source of allegations.

    None of this suggests misconduct is inevitable. It suggests that where institutions have reduced metrics pressure, resourced oversight and made contribution transparent, the same literature that identifies the causes also points to measurable, achievable prevention.