CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: retraction of research papers

  • Publication Misconduct in Research: The Post-Publication Process

    Publication misconduct in research discovered after a paper is already public triggers a defined post-publication pipeline: a reader or institution files a complaint, the journal opens a formal investigation guided by COPE, an expression of concern may be issued while it runs, and a retraction or correction follows if misconduct is confirmed.

    Publication misconduct is unethical conduct in the publishing process itself — fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, duplicate submission, or fraudulent (ghost, guest or gift) authorship — as distinct from poor research design or an honest error in the underlying study. Once a flawed paper has already been indexed, cited and built upon, the mechanics of fixing the record are entirely different from catching the same problem at peer review. This article sets out what actually happens once that process starts, who runs it, and how the outcome gets communicated to readers and indexers.

    What counts as publication misconduct once a paper is already public?

    Publication misconduct covers conduct in the writing and submission of a paper, not the underlying experiment: fabrication (inventing data), falsification (manipulating images, figures or results), plagiarism, duplicate or redundant publication, and fraudulent authorship such as ghost, guest or gift authorship. The Royal Society’s publishing ethics policy defines research misconduct as “fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in proposing, performing, or reviewing research, or in reporting research results” — and explicitly excludes “honest error or differences of opinion” from that definition.

    That exclusion matters at the post-publication stage. An editor’s first job on receiving a complaint is not to assume guilt but to classify the report: is this a correctable mistake, an authorship dispute, or a potential integrity breach that needs a formal case? Only the third category enters the investigation pipeline described below.

    What triggers a post-publication review?

    Post-publication scrutiny rarely originates with the journal itself. It is most often triggered externally, then formalised internally once a case is opened.

    • Reader or third-party complaints — direct emails to the editor, or public flags on post-publication review platforms such as PubPeer.
    • Institutional referral — a university research integrity office notifies the journal after its own internal inquiry.
    • Journal screening tools — image-manipulation and paper-mill detection software run against submitted or already-published figures.
    • Whistleblowers — co-authors, former colleagues or lab members raising concerns directly.
    • Funder or sponsor notice — a grant body flags a discrepancy found during its own audit.

    Under the ICMJE Recommendations, editors who receive “convincing evidence” of misconduct have a duty to pursue the matter — including by contacting the authors’ institution — rather than simply declining to act on an anonymous tip.

    How does the editorial investigation actually run?

    Once a case is opened, the journal follows a sequence set out in COPE’s guidance rather than improvising case by case. The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Retraction Guidelines (2019) and its accompanying flowcharts are the reference most editors use to decide what to do next, and in what order.

    1. Initial screening — the editor checks whether the complaint is plausible and falls within the journal’s remit.
    2. Author response — the corresponding author is asked to explain, and usually to supply raw data, original images or lab records.
    3. Institutional referral — if the explanation is unsatisfactory or the allegation is serious, the editor notifies the authors’ institution, which runs its own inquiry under its research integrity policy; the journal does not adjudicate misconduct itself.
    4. Interim notice — while the inquiry is unresolved, the journal may publish an editorial expression of concern attached to the paper.
    5. Final notice — depending on the outcome, the journal publishes a correction, a retraction, or lifts the expression of concern with no further action.

    This sequencing is the core distinction between research-stage and publication-stage misconduct handling: at the research stage, a funder or institution can simply stop a study; at the publication stage, the journal must communicate every step publicly, because the paper is already part of the citable literature.

    Retraction, correction, or expression of concern — what is the difference?

    These three notice types are not interchangeable, and mixing them up is one of the most common errors in coverage of publication misconduct. Each has a distinct trigger, a distinct effect on the paper’s citability, and a distinct authority that can issue it.

    Notice type When it is issued Effect on the paper Who can issue it
    Correction / erratum / corrigendum An error is confirmed but conclusions still hold Paper stands; correction is linked to it Editor, with author agreement
    Editorial expression of concern Investigation is open but unresolved Paper stands but is flagged as unreliable pending outcome Editor, independently of authors
    Retraction Misconduct or unreliable findings confirmed Paper is marked “RETRACTED” but remains accessible for transparency Editor, authors, or institution

    A retracted paper is not deleted. Standard practice, reflected in NISO RP-45-2022, Communication of Retractions, Removals, and Expressions of Concern (CREC), requires the original text to remain online with a clear, permanent watermark and a linked retraction notice explaining the reason — so the scientific record stays transparent rather than simply erased. Since 2023, Crossref has hosted the freely available Retraction Watch Database, giving publishers, institutions and reference managers a shared, machine-readable source of retraction metadata rather than relying on scattered publisher notices alone.

    Common questions about post-publication misconduct

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

    A correction fixes a confirmed error while the paper’s conclusions stand. An expression of concern flags an unresolved investigation without prejudging guilt. A retraction is issued once misconduct or unreliable findings are confirmed, permanently marking the paper as withdrawn from the reliable literature while keeping it accessible.

    What triggers a post-publication misconduct investigation?

    Investigations are usually triggered by a reader complaint, a post-publication review platform flag, an institutional referral, a whistleblower report, or automated screening for image manipulation or paper-mill patterns. Under the ICMJE Recommendations, editors receiving credible evidence have a duty to pursue it rather than dismiss it.

    Does a retracted paper disappear from the internet?

    No. Under NISO’s CREC recommended practice, retracted articles must remain accessible with a permanent watermark and a linked retraction notice. Removal is reserved for rare cases involving legal risk, such as defamation or serious safety hazards, not ordinary misconduct findings.

    Who decides whether a published paper is retracted?

    The journal editor makes the final call, but the decision is informed by the authors’ institution, which runs the substantive misconduct inquiry. COPE’s Retraction Guidelines position the journal as the notice-issuing authority and the institution as the fact-finding authority — the two roles are kept deliberately separate.

    What does this mean for institutions and authors?

    For research administrators, a post-publication complaint is not a journal-only event. Institutions are expected to run a parallel inquiry, respond to editor requests for data within a defined timeframe, and — if misconduct is confirmed — cooperate on the retraction notice’s wording under COPE guidance. Authors named on a retracted paper should expect it to be discoverable through Crossref’s Retraction Watch Database and CrossMark update badges wherever it is cited or indexed, regardless of original host.

    Contributor-role clarity also matters here: disputes over who is accountable for which part of a paper are easier to resolve when contributions were recorded precisely at submission. CASRAI’s authorship resources and research administration guidance cover structuring that accountability before a dispute reaches an editor’s desk.

    Where the retraction pipeline is heading

    Two shifts are changing post-publication misconduct handling. First, machine-readable retraction metadata — now centralised at Crossref rather than scattered across publisher sites — propagates a retraction to citation databases and discovery layers automatically, closing a gap that once left retracted papers silently cited for years. Second, paper-mill detection is shifting discovery earlier, toward pre-publication screening — but the CREC-based post-publication pipeline remains the backstop for everything that gets through regardless. The mark of a well-functioning system is not the absence of retractions; it is a transparent, standardised trail from complaint to notice that any reader can follow.

  • Retraction Statement: 5 Elements COPE Requires

    A retraction statement must identify the article and its authors, state the specific reason for retraction, name who initiated it, record whether authors agree, and be permanently and bidirectionally linked to the original publication. These five elements come from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Retraction Guidelines and the NISO Recommended Practice for Communication of Retractions, Removals, and Expressions of Concern (CREC, RP-45-2024). A retraction statement is the formal notice, issued by a journal editor or publisher, that withdraws confidence in a previously published article’s findings while keeping the original text permanently accessible and marked as retracted.

    This guide is a drafting walkthrough, not a policy overview — it maps what COPE decides, what NISO’s CREC standard requires you to structure, and what EASE’s checklist helps you verify, into a single sequence editors and research-integrity offices can follow when a retraction notice actually has to go out.

    What must a retraction statement include?

    A compliant retraction statement combines a governance decision with a metadata obligation. COPE’s Retraction Guidelines set out when and why a retraction should happen; the NISO CREC Recommended Practice, published in June 2024, sets out how that decision must be communicated so it propagates reliably across databases, citation managers and search indexes. Combining both frameworks gives five required elements.

    # Element Source requirement
    1 Full identification of the retracted article (title, authors, DOI, citation) COPE Retraction Guidelines (2019)
    2 A specific, factual reason for retraction, distinguishing honest error from misconduct COPE Retraction Guidelines; NISO RP-45-2024
    3 Identification of who initiated the retraction (authors, editor, institution, publisher) COPE Retraction Guidelines
    4 Documented author agreement or disagreement with the decision COPE Retraction Guidelines
    5 Bidirectional, machine-readable linking between notice and original, with prompt free access NISO RP-45-2024 (CREC); COPE

    The original article is never deleted. Under COPE’s guidance it must remain online, clearly watermarked as retracted on every page of the PDF, with the retraction notice linked in both directions so readers encountering either document see the other. The EASE Standardised Retraction Form operationalises this as a checklist editors can complete before publication of the notice, reducing the inconsistency that COPE and NISO both identify as a persistent weakness in current practice.

    How do you document the reason for retraction?

    The reason section is where most retraction statements fail. A retraction statement must state, in unambiguous language, which specific data, figures or conclusions are affected and why — not merely that “errors were found.” Vague or reason-free notices deny authors the chance to explain honest mistakes and, per research cited in publisher guidance on this subject, remove the deterrent effect a clear misconduct finding is meant to provide.

    In practice, reasons cluster into recurring categories that function as informal reason codes across journals:

    • Honest error (calculation, methodological or reagent mistakes)
    • Data fabrication or falsification
    • Image or figure manipulation or duplication
    • Plagiarism or duplicate/overlapping publication
    • Ethical violations (consent, animal welfare, authorship disputes)
    • Irreproducibility discovered post-publication

    Plagiarism and data manipulation remain the most frequently cited categories in large-scale retraction analyses, and Nature reported that more than 10,000 research papers were retracted in 2023 alone — a record volume that intensified pressure on journals to standardise how reasons are recorded rather than merely disclosed. Where an institutional investigation produced the finding, the statement should attribute it directly to that body rather than restating it as the editor’s own conclusion.

    Who signs off on a retraction statement?

    Under COPE guidelines, the editor holds final authority to retract, but authors retain the right to have their agreement or disagreement recorded in the published notice. This is not a formality: a notice that silently presents unanimous agreement when one co-author disputed the decision misrepresents the record and can itself become a subject of complaint.

    Three sign-off outcomes are possible, and the statement should say plainly which applies:

    • Full agreement — all authors accept the retraction and its stated reason.
    • Partial agreement — some authors agree; named dissenting authors are recorded with their position.
    • Editor-initiated without author agreement — used when authors are unreachable, uncooperative, or contest findings the editor and, where applicable, the institution consider conclusive.

    Because contributor-level disputes often drive disagreement over sign-off, journals increasingly ask retracting authors to clarify individual contributions during the process — a task that structured contributor role taxonomies support. CASRAI originated the CRediT contributor role taxonomy in 2014; the standard is now stewarded by NISO as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022 and is widely used to attribute exactly whose CRediT contributor role is implicated when a retraction turns on data curation, analysis or investigation responsibilities rather than the paper as a whole. Research-integrity offices handling authorship disputes alongside a retraction should document this separately from the notice itself.

    How should a retraction be linked and communicated?

    NISO’s CREC Recommended Practice requires that retraction status be carried as structured, machine-readable metadata, not just prose in a PDF — so that discovery layers, citation managers and indexing services display the retraction consistently wherever the article appears, not only on the publisher’s own platform. This closes a long-documented gap: readers who encounter a retracted paper via a secondary database, preprint mirror or reference manager have often seen no retraction indicator at all.

    Practical requirements drawn from CREC and COPE together include:

    • Publishing the notice promptly and making it freely accessible, regardless of the original article’s access status
    • Applying a persistent, visible watermark to every page of the retracted PDF
    • Linking the notice and the original article bidirectionally via persistent identifiers (DOI)
    • Propagating retraction status to abstracting and indexing services and reference-linking systems
    • Retaining the retracted article permanently in the archive rather than removing it

    Retraction Watch’s database independently tracks whether these obligations are actually met, and its long-running “ideal retraction notice” analysis remains a useful benchmark precisely because so many notices still omit the reason, the initiator, or the sign-off status that COPE and NISO both specify.

    Common questions about retraction statements

    What is a retraction notice?

    A retraction notice is the published statement announcing that a journal article’s findings can no longer be relied upon. It is linked to the original article, states the reason, and remains permanently in the record — the article itself is marked as retracted, not deleted.

    What are the most common reasons for retraction?

    Large-scale analyses consistently rank plagiarism, data fabrication or falsification, and image or figure manipulation as the leading causes, followed by honest error and duplicate publication. Reason categories should always be stated explicitly rather than left generic.

    Do retracted studies still get cited?

    Yes. Published citation-tracking studies show retracted papers continue to be cited for years afterward, often because citing authors are unaware of the retraction. This is the core problem the NISO CREC standard’s machine-readable metadata requirement is designed to reduce.

    Can a retracted paper be republished?

    Under COPE’s position on this question, authors may republish reliable portions of a retracted work, provided they transparently notify the new journal’s editors of the prior retraction and its reason. Silent resubmission of retracted material is treated as a fresh ethics violation.

    What this means for editors and institutions

    Retraction volume is rising, not falling: Nature’s 2023 count of over 10,000 retractions was described by integrity researchers as “the tip of the iceberg,” reflecting better detection tools rather than worse research. That trajectory makes standardisation, not case-by-case drafting, the sustainable path for editorial offices and university research-integrity units alike.

    Editors who adopt the COPE-plus-CREC sequence — decide, document the reason, record sign-off, publish with persistent linked metadata — produce notices that hold up under later scrutiny from Retraction Watch, institutional auditors, and the authors themselves. Research-administration offices building or reviewing their own research-administration retraction workflow should treat the EASE form as the pre-publication check and NISO RP-45-2024 as the technical specification the published notice must satisfy.

  • Corrigendum vs Erratum: A Decision Framework

    A corrigendum corrects an error the authors introduced before publication — flawed data, a wrong affiliation, a miscalculation — while an erratum corrects an error the publisher introduced during production, such as a typesetting mistake or a misplaced figure. A retraction withdraws the paper entirely because its findings can no longer be trusted. Which notice an editor issues depends on who caused the error and whether it invalidates the paper’s conclusions.

    A corrigendum vs erratum decision is one of the most common — and most frequently mishandled — calls a journal editor or research integrity office makes. Get it wrong and a paper that needed only a correction ends up stigmatised as retracted, or worse, a paper with compromised findings survives under a cosmetic “correction” label. This explainer sets out a COPE-aligned decision framework for distinguishing corrigenda, errata, and retractions, and for knowing when an interim Expression of Concern is the right holding step.

    Definition: a corrigendum is a post-publication notice correcting an error the authors introduced into an already-published article, distinct from an erratum, which corrects an error the journal or publisher introduced during production.

    Contents

    What Is the Difference Between a Corrigendum and an Erratum?

    The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) states the working distinction plainly: “the term erratum usually refers to a production error, caused by the journal,” while “the term corrigendum (or correction) usually refers to an author error.” An erratum fixes something the journal’s own production process broke — a dropped decimal point during typesetting, a caption swapped between two figures, an author’s name misspelled by a copyeditor. A corrigendum fixes something wrong in the manuscript the authors submitted — an incorrect data table, a miscalculated statistic, an omitted funding disclosure, a wrong affiliation.

    Both notices share one condition: the underlying conclusions of the paper must remain valid. Neither is a vehicle for revising results, adding new data, or reversing a finding — that requires a different mechanism entirely.

    Not every publisher enforces this line consistently. COPE itself notes that “many journals do not distinguish between corrigendum or erratum but the note can explain if it is the publisher’s or authors’ error,” and some use “correction” as a catch-all. The US National Library of Medicine, which indexes PubMed, goes further still: it classifies both corrigenda and errata under a single “Published Erratum” tag for cataloguing purposes, regardless of who caused the error. Editors should not assume a downstream index preserves the author/publisher distinction they carefully applied upstream.

    Notice type Who caused the error Typical trigger Effect on the record
    Erratum Publisher/production Typesetting, misplaced figure, production-introduced typo Article stands; notice linked bidirectionally
    Corrigendum Author(s) Data entry error, wrong affiliation, miscalculation Article stands; notice linked bidirectionally
    Addendum Author(s) New, non-conflicting supplementary information Article stands; addendum appended
    Expression of Concern Unresolved Serious concern raised, investigation incomplete Article flagged pending outcome
    Retraction Author(s), publisher, or both Unreliable findings, misconduct, plagiarism, duplicate publication Article formally withdrawn; original remains visible with notice

    When Does an Error Require a Retraction Instead of a Correction?

    A retraction is warranted the moment an error stops being cosmetic and starts undermining the paper’s conclusions. COPE’s retraction guidance and the ICMJE Recommendations converge on the same threshold: if the reported findings can no longer be relied upon — whether from honest experimental error, data fabrication, image manipulation, or a flawed method that invalidates the results — a correction notice is insufficient and the paper must be retracted.

    COPE’s published criteria for retraction include clear evidence of unreliable findings, whether from major error or research misconduct; plagiarism or duplicate/redundant publication without proper attribution; and research that failed to meet ethical requirements for human or animal subjects. A single miscoded statistical test that changes a paper’s headline conclusion crosses this line; a mislabelled axis on a supplementary figure does not.

    This is a binary test editors should apply explicitly rather than by instinct: does the error change what a reader would conclude from the paper? If yes, retraction (or, where only part of the paper is compromised, a carefully scoped partial retraction) is the correct instrument — not a corrigendum dressed up to avoid reputational fallout.

    A Step-by-Step Decision Framework for Editors

    Use this sequence to route an identified error to the correct notice type:

    1. Does the error affect the validity, reliability, or interpretation of the results? If no, proceed to step 2. If yes, skip to step 4.
    2. Who introduced the error — the authors before submission, or the publisher during production? Author-origin errors that don’t affect conclusions become a corrigendum; publisher-origin errors become an erratum.
    3. Is the correction additive rather than corrective — new information that doesn’t conflict with the published record? Route to an addendum instead.
    4. Is there evidence of misconduct, fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, or duplicate publication, or does the error invalidate the paper’s central conclusions? If yes, this is retraction territory.
    5. Is an investigation still open but the concern serious enough that readers need an immediate warning? Issue an Expression of Concern as an interim notice while the inquiry proceeds.
    6. Publish the notice with bidirectional linking to the original article’s DOI, so indexers, Crossref, and reference managers can propagate the correction status automatically.

    Every step should be documented in the journal’s editorial record even when the final notice seems self-evident — COPE explicitly cautions that authors must be informed before any correction or retraction notice is published, and that agreement on wording, while ideal, “is not a requirement.”

    Expressions of Concern, Partial Retractions, and Addenda

    Three intermediate instruments sit between “leave it alone” and “retract in full,” and editors under-use all three.

    • Expression of Concern: issued when an investigation into a paper’s integrity is under way but unresolved, and the concern is serious enough that readers need warning before the inquiry concludes. It is explicitly a holding notice, not a verdict.
    • Partial retraction: withdraws only the compromised portion of a paper — a single figure, dataset, or claim — while leaving the remainder of the record intact. COPE guidance treats this instrument cautiously, since a partially retracted paper can be difficult for readers to interpret correctly; it should be reserved for cases where the surviving content is genuinely independent of the flawed portion.
    • Addendum: adds new, non-conflicting information to a published paper — for example, a dataset the authors did not originally deposit. It corrects nothing; it supplements.

    Since 2023, Crossref has stewarded the Retraction Watch Database and integrated its records into Crossref metadata, making retraction status machine-discoverable directly from an article’s DOI rather than requiring a manual search. This matters operationally: a research office checking whether a cited paper has been retracted, corrected, or flagged with an Expression of Concern can now query that status programmatically instead of relying on the journal’s own website staying current.

    Redaction vs Retraction: Why the Terms Get Confused

    “Redaction” and “retraction” are frequently conflated in search queries and in casual use, but they describe unrelated actions. Redaction means removing or obscuring specific sensitive content from a document — a patient identifier, classified information, a legally privileged passage — while leaving the rest of the document intact and published. Retraction means formally withdrawing an entire scholarly article from the reliable literature because its findings can no longer be trusted.

    A research office redacts personal data from a dataset before deposit; it does not redact a published paper. If the concern is that a paper’s findings are unreliable, the applicable mechanism is a correction (corrigendum/erratum) or a retraction — never a “redaction” of the article itself. Editors and compliance staff should treat any external query using “redact” in connection with a published paper as a signal to clarify which of the five instruments above the requester actually means.

    Common Questions About Corrections and Retractions

    What Is the Difference Between Addendum and Corrigendum?

    An addendum adds new, non-conflicting information to a published paper, such as a supplementary dataset the authors omitted at submission. A corrigendum corrects an existing error the authors introduced — incorrect data, a wrong affiliation, a miscalculation. Addenda supplement the record; corrigenda fix it.

    What Is the Purpose of a Corrigendum?

    A corrigendum exists to correct an author-introduced error that appears in the body of a published article — flawed data, a misreported figure, or an incorrect reference — without withdrawing the paper. It preserves the article’s validity while making the published record accurate and permanently linked to the original.

    What Is the Difference Between Errata and Correction?

    “Correction” is the umbrella term covering any post-publication fix that doesn’t invalidate a paper’s conclusions. “Errata” traditionally denotes production-side corrections specifically, but the US National Library of Medicine indexes all such fixes — author or publisher caused — under a single “Published Erratum” category, regardless of origin.

    What Does an Erratum Mean?

    An erratum is a formal notice correcting an error the publisher or journal introduced during production — typesetting, a misplaced figure, a formatting mistake — rather than an error present in the authors’ original submission. It confirms the underlying research and conclusions remain valid.

    Implications for Research Offices

    For institutional research offices and research integrity staff, the practical stakes of this distinction are higher than the terminology suggests. Grant reporting, tenure and promotion dossiers, and REF/assessment-exercise submissions all treat “retracted” very differently from “corrected” — a retraction can trigger funder inquiries and institutional misconduct review, while a corrigendum typically does not. Misclassifying a serious, conclusion-altering error as a corrigendum to avoid that scrutiny is itself a publication-ethics failure, not a shortcut.

    Research administrators should build a standing check into any publication-tracking workflow: query DOIs against Crossref’s retraction metadata at the point of citation-count reporting or dossier compilation, not only at initial publication, since correction and retraction notices can post months or years after the original article.

    The Bottom Line

    The corrigendum/erratum boundary is a question of who caused the error; the correction/retraction boundary is a question of whether the paper’s conclusions still hold. Editors who apply both tests explicitly — and who reach for an Expression of Concern when an investigation is still open — protect the scholarly record more effectively than those who default to whichever notice feels least reputationally costly. As Crossref’s retraction metadata becomes a standard citation-checking layer, the cost of misclassification is no longer just reputational; it is now machine-visible across the scholarly infrastructure that research offices, funders, and publishers all query.

    For related terminology, consult the CASRAI Dictionary of research-administration terms, and see how correction and retraction tracking fits into wider institutional workflows on the research administration hub.

  • Retraction in Academic Publishing: A Terminology Guide for Editors and Research Offices

    Editors, research-integrity officers and authors routinely use “retraction”, “correction”, “expression of concern” and “redaction” as if they were interchangeable. They are not. Retraction in academic publishing is a formal, permanent withdrawal of a paper’s standing, reserved for findings that can no longer be trusted — a different remedy, with a different evidence threshold, from a correction, an expression of concern, or a redaction. Conflating the terms slows investigations and can misstate a case’s severity to funders, tenure committees, and the public record.

    The four publishing remedies at a glance

    The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), whose retraction guidelines were updated to version 3 in August 2025, and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) both treat these as distinct editorial tools, not synonyms. The table below sets out the working distinctions research offices and editorial staff need.

    Remedy What it means Typical trigger Who issues it Effect on the original article
    Retraction Formal, permanent withdrawal from the reliable literature Fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, unethical research, compromised peer review Editor, sometimes jointly with the publisher Article stays online, clearly watermarked “RETRACTED”
    Correction (corrigendum/erratum) Fixes a specific, non-fatal error Author error (corrigendum) or production error (erratum) Authors (corrigendum) or journal (erratum) Article stands; correction notice is linked to it
    Expression of concern Interim public notice pending an unresolved inquiry Inconclusive evidence or an ongoing institutional investigation Editor Article stands, flagged as under review
    Redaction Removal or masking of specific sensitive content only Legal, privacy, or confidentiality requirement (e.g. identifiable patient data) Publisher, usually on legal or data-protection advice Only the redacted portion is withheld; the rest of the record stands

    Retraction: when findings cannot be trusted

    Per COPE’s 2025 retraction guidelines, “the purpose of retraction is to correct the literature and ensure its integrity, not to punish the authors.” A retraction disavows the paper’s conclusions; it does not usually remove the text itself, which stays accessible but permanently marked as unreliable.

    COPE and ICMJE both point to a similar set of grounds for retraction:

    • Unreliable findings — from honest error (miscalculation, flawed methodology) or from misconduct (fabricated or falsified data)
    • Plagiarism — appropriating another party’s words, data, or ideas without credit
    • Redundant or duplicate publication — the same findings published elsewhere without cross-reference or permission
    • Unethical research — studies that breached human- or animal-subject ethics requirements
    • Compromised peer review or undisclosed conflicts of interest that could have biased the editorial decision

    A retraction can be initiated by authors, editors, or the publisher, but COPE is explicit that the editor holds final decision authority, consistent with editorial independence — the publisher’s role is to support the investigation and help issue the notice, not to make the call.

    Correction, corrigendum and erratum: fixing the record without withdrawing it

    A correction is the appropriate remedy when an error is real but does not undermine the paper’s overall conclusions — a mislabelled figure, an incorrect affiliation, a transposed digit in a table. Two related terms are often used loosely but have a real distinction:

    • Corrigendum — a correction of an error introduced by the authors themselves
    • Erratum — a correction of an error introduced by the journal during production

    Both are published as a linked notice attached to the original article, which otherwise remains part of the reliable record. A correction is not a lesser form of retraction — it is a separate remedy for a separate class of problem, and treating minor corrections as reputational events discourages the self-correction that COPE and ICMJE actively encourage.

    Expression of concern: the interim signal

    An expression of concern (EOC) is not a verdict. COPE’s guidance describes it as the appropriate step when an editor is uncertain about a publication’s reliability because of insufficient information, delays in institutional response, or an investigation that will not conclude quickly. Rather than wait — and risk the paper being cited or acted on in the meantime — the editor publishes a notice flagging the concern while the inquiry continues.

    An EOC typically resolves in one of three ways: retraction, correction, or a formal confirmation that the concerns did not hold up. Editorial and research-integrity teams should track EOCs as open cases, not closed ones, and revisit them on a defined schedule rather than leaving them unresolved indefinitely.

    Redaction vs retraction: a different kind of removal

    This is where terminology confusion is most common — and most consequential. Redaction is not a recognised category within the COPE/ICMJE retraction-correction-EOC taxonomy. It is a records-management and legal term for the selective removal or masking of specific sensitive content — identifiable patient information, confidential commercial data, material under a court order — while the rest of the document remains intact and in force.

    Retraction, by contrast, withdraws the paper’s standing as a whole. A journal might redact one identifying detail from a case report to comply with data-protection law without touching the paper’s scientific conclusions; that is not equivalent to, and should never be reported internally as, a retraction. Research offices logging cases for funder reporting should keep these as separate fields — collapsing them into one “removed” category misrepresents both the scale and the cause of the action.

    Answer-first questions editors ask

    What does it mean if a publication is retracted?

    A retracted publication has been formally withdrawn from the reliable scholarly record by its editor, usually because of unreliable data, misconduct, or a serious ethical breach. The article typically remains online, watermarked “RETRACTED”, so the record stays transparent rather than being erased.

    What is the purpose of retractions in academic publishing?

    Retraction exists to correct the literature and protect its integrity, not to punish authors, per COPE’s own guidelines. It warns future readers, citing authors, and clinicians not to rely on the paper’s findings or conclusions, limiting downstream harm from erroneous or fraudulent results.

    Do retracted studies still get cited?

    Yes — research tracked via PubMed Central and the Retraction Watch database shows retracted papers continue to be cited after retraction, sometimes for years, often because citing authors are unaware of the notice. This is why prompt, linked, machine-readable retraction notices matter so much for discovery.

    Can a retracted paper be published again?

    A substantially revised version can sometimes be resubmitted if the authors have genuinely corrected the underlying problem, but this must be done transparently, with the editor informed of the paper’s history. It is never appropriate to resubmit a corrected version without disclosing the prior retraction.

    What this means for editors and research offices

    For journals, precise terminology is a workflow issue as much as an editorial-ethics one: COPE’s flowcharts, ICMJE’s recommendations, and most editorial-management systems expect cases to be tagged with the correct remedy from the outset, because that tag drives downstream indexing signals sent to CrossRef, PubMed, and DOI registries.

    For research offices, the stakes are similar. Case files, funder disclosures, and research-administration compliance reports should mirror the same four-way distinction rather than defaulting to informal language like “the paper was pulled.” Where a case originates in a dispute over who contributed what to a flawed paper, structured contributor statements — the kind increasingly requested under authorship policies — can help institutions establish individual accountability before deciding whether the remedy is a correction or a full retraction. Internal glossaries and training materials can also be cross-referenced against a maintained dictionary of research-administration terminology rather than drafted informally office by office.

    The rise of paper-mill detection tools has also pushed COPE to add explicit guidance on batch retractions — cases where dozens or hundreds of articles from the same source are retracted together for the same systemic reason. That volume makes definitional discipline more urgent: a research office tracking hundreds of cases needs the four categories kept clean to report accurately to funders and institutional leadership.

    Looking ahead

    As journals face more paper-mill-driven batch retractions and more AI-assisted-writing disclosures, the boundary between “correction” and “retraction” will keep being tested in ways COPE’s earlier guidelines did not originally anticipate. Editors and research offices that maintain a precise, shared vocabulary — retraction, correction, expression of concern, and redaction as four distinct tools rather than one blurred category — will be better placed to report consistently, protect the record, and respond quickly when the next systemic case emerges.