CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: retraction watch leaderboard

  • 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.

  • Retraction Watch Database Free: How to Use It for Institutional Due Diligence

    When a hiring committee, grant panel, or co-author vetting workflow needs to check a candidate’s publication record, the Retraction Watch Database is usually the first stop. Accessing the retraction watch database free of charge is now straightforward, but only if research offices know which of its three access routes to use — and where its coverage runs thin. This guide sets out a practical, step-by-step approach for institutional due diligence, plus the credibility caveats a screening checklist should not skip.

    What is the Retraction Watch database?

    The Retraction Watch Database (RWDB) is maintained by the Center for Scientific Integrity, the nonprofit behind the Retraction Watch blog founded in 2010 by science journalists Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus. It now logs more than 65,000 retractions, corrections, and expressions of concern, up from roughly 40,000 entries at the time of its September 2023 data-sharing agreement with Crossref, which made the dataset far more widely and openly accessible.

    Retraction Watch also publishes derivative lists that get searched separately: the Retraction Watch Leaderboard (most-retracted individual authors) and country-level breakdowns used in bibliometric research. These are useful signals, but they are not substitutes for a record-level check, as the sections below explain.

    How to search the Retraction Watch database for free

    There are three free access routes, and each suits a different due-diligence task.

    Access method Best for Coverage / updates Cost and limits
    Web search form (retractiondatabase.org) Quick, single-name or single-DOI checks Live; each search returns up to 50 entries Free; since October 2024 you must fill at least one of article type, a date range, or a PMID/DOI
    Full CSV download (Crossref GitLab repository) Bulk screening of long candidate or co-investigator lists Complete dataset, refreshed periodically Free; no per-query limits
    Crossref REST API Automated checks embedded in onboarding or grant systems Updated on working days from publisher data Free; standard Crossref API rate limits apply

    For a single name or one paper’s DOI, the web form is fastest. For anything resembling a batch check — a full hiring shortlist, an entire grant consortium, or an author list on a multi-author manuscript — the CSV download or the API is the correct tool, because the web interface’s per-search filter requirement makes open-ended browsing impractical by design.

    Using the database for hiring, grant, and co-author due diligence

    Research offices increasingly build RWDB checks into standard screening, alongside conflict-of-interest disclosures and authorship verification. A workable process looks like this:

    • Before a hiring or tenure decision, batch-check the candidate’s DOI or PMID list against the CSV download rather than the web form, which is not built for unfiltered browsing.
    • For grant panels, check every named co-investigator’s publication list, not only the principal investigator’s — retraction risk is frequently concentrated in co-authored papers rather than sole-authored ones.
    • For co-author vetting ahead of a manuscript submission, search prospective collaborators by name and affiliation, and treat a “Correction” or “Expression of Concern” entry as a prompt for further reading, not an automatic disqualifier.
    • Record the query date and parameters used: RWDB entries are added and revised continuously, so a clean result today is not a permanent clearance.
    • Cross-reference any hit against PubMed and the publisher’s own notice before acting on it, given documented metadata discrepancies between databases.

    Common questions, answered

    Is there a Retraction Watch database?

    Yes. The Retraction Watch Database is maintained by the Center for Scientific Integrity and hosted at retractiondatabase.org. It logs more than 65,000 retractions, corrections, and expressions of concern, and since September 2023 has been distributed publicly through a data agreement with Crossref.

    Use the free web form at retractiondatabase.org, filtering by article type, date range, or a PMID/DOI — required since October 2024 to manage server load. For bulk or unrestricted searching, download the complete dataset as a free CSV from Crossref’s GitLab repository instead.

    How do I check if a specific article has been retracted?

    Search the article’s DOI or PMID directly in the RWDB, or check the publisher’s own page for a retraction notice. Tools such as Zotero and the Crossref REST API also flag retracted status automatically when a DOI is queried or a reference is added to a library.

    Is Retraction Watch data comprehensive for corrections and expressions of concern?

    No. Retraction Watch states its database is the most complete source specifically for retractions; coverage of corrections and expressions of concern is skewed toward items linked to existing retractions or its own reporting, so due-diligence teams should treat those two categories as indicative rather than exhaustive.

    Limits, credibility, and what the leaderboard does (and doesn’t) tell you

    The RWDB’s own user guide is explicit about its boundaries: expressions of concern and corrections are entered “as they relate to existing retractions, blog posts, or high-profile studies,” not comprehensively, so any counts of those two record types drawn from the database will be skewed and should not be read as population-representative.

    Is Retraction Watch credible for institutional due diligence? The evidence points to yes, with caveats. The Center for Scientific Integrity’s dataset has been independently examined in the academic literature — a 2025 study in Accountability in Research compared RWD metadata accuracy against PubMed and Web of Science and found it a strong, though not flawless, source. Its integration into Crossref’s scholarly infrastructure since 2023 adds a layer of institutional stewardship beyond a single newsroom, and reference tools such as Zotero rely on it to flag retracted citations automatically.

    The Retraction Watch Leaderboard — a running list of the most-retracted individual researchers, topped for years by anaesthesiologist Yoshitaka Fujii with more than 180 retractions — and country-level breakdowns used in bibliometric studies are genuinely useful for spotting patterns. But leaderboard rank reflects investigative attention and reporting history as much as underlying prevalence, and cross-country comparisons need population and output normalisation that the raw retraction watch by country counts do not themselves provide. Neither should replace a DOI-level check on the specific individual or paper under review.

    Implications for research offices

    The database’s growth — from roughly 40,000 entries at the time of the Crossref agreement to more than 65,000 now — reflects both rising retraction volume and improved detection, not necessarily declining research quality alone. For research administration teams, the practical implication is to treat RWDB screening as a routine, documented step in research administration workflows, sitting alongside authorship and contributorship checks rather than as an ad hoc search performed only when a concern is already raised.

    As programmatic access matures through the Crossref API, expect RWDB checks to become embedded directly into hiring, grants, and manuscript systems, much as authorship verification already is. Institutions that build this into a documented, repeatable checklist — rather than a one-off Google search — will be better placed to defend their due-diligence decisions if a retraction surfaces after the fact.