PloS Biology
Retractions in scientific publishing are complex, often driven by misconduct or emerging issues like papermills, but they can also result from non-ethical reasons or responsible authors correcting honest errors. Using the Retraction Watch database, the Authors of this paper found 39,468 retractions that were linked to Scopus citation data after excluding non-retractions, republished papers, and cases unrelated to author errors. They then examined the number of retractions of every scientist and they found out that among top-cited scientists, 3.3% (career-long) and 4.0% (2023) had at least one retraction. Retractions are more frequent in life sciences, among younger, highly self-citing, and prolific authors, and notably high in some developing countries like Senegal (66.7%), Ecuador (28.6%), and Pakistan (27.8%). Authors highlight that many retracted papers continue to be cited, often because citing authors are unaware of the retraction. In addition, retractions are not always clearly linked to author misconduct, and data inaccuracies (e.g., author misattributions, name disambiguation issues) complicate individual-level analyses, and a careful interpretation of retraction data is required.
PLoS Biol. 2025; 23, e3002999. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3002999
Recommended on behalf of EASE by Silvia Maina, Italy