An Exploratory Analysis of 4844 Withdrawn Articles and Their Retraction Notes

This article looks at the dynamic of retractions and retraction notes, retraction reasons for questionable research and publication practices, countries producing retracted articles, and the scientific impact of retractions. Four thousand eight hundred forty-four retracted articles published between 2009 and 2020 and indexed in PubMed were analyzed. RESULTS: Mistakes/inconsistent data account for 32% of total retractions, followed by images(22,5%), plagiarism(13,7%) and overlap(11,5%). Thirty countries account for 94,79% of 4844 retractions. Top five are: China(32,78%), United States(18,84%), India(7,25%), Japan(4,37%) and Italy(3,75%). The total citations number for all articles is 140810(Google Scholar), 96000(Dimensions). Average exposure time(ET) is 28,89 months. Largest ET is for image retractions(49,3 months), lowest ET is for editorial errors(11,2 months). The impact of retracted research is higher for countries like United States, Spain, Netherlands and lower for countries like Pakistan, China, Poland. CONCLUSIONS: Mistakes and data inconsistencies represent the main retraction reason; images and ethical issues show a growing trend, while plagiarism and overlap still represent a significant problem. There is a steady increase in QRP and QPP article withdrawals. Retraction of articles seems to be a technology-dependent process. The number of citations of retracted articles shows a high impact of papers published by authors from certain countries. The number of retracted articles per country does not always accurately reflect the scientific impact of QRP/QPP articles. The country distribution of retraction reasons shows structural problems in the organization and quality control of scientific research, which have different images depending on geographical location, economic development, and cultural model.