Celebrating Failure: Learning lessons from a leading consumer behavior journal’s retractions

Abstract

Purpose : A retraction is the removal of a published article from the scientific record. It is an admission of failure. Yet, every retraction, regardless of its cause(s), is instructive. Using the oxymoron/concept of celebrating failure, this study investigates retractions in the Journal of Consumer Research ( JCR ). Method : The content of each JCR retraction notice was examined to determine the initiator(s) of the retraction, retractors, reason(s) for retraction, and time-to-retraction. Findings : According to the findings, JCR issued ten retraction notices between June 2012 and October 2020. The ten retraction notices generated together, and up to April 11, 2022, some 18,378 pageviews, 3,944 PDF downloads, and a total Altmetric Attention Score of 36. The authors of the retracted articles initiated four of the ten retraction processes. The retractors were the authors in five of the cases. The most common reason for retraction, with five occurrences, is “data and analysis anomalies”. It took 947.6 days on average for a JCR retracted article to be withdrawn. Originality : Instead of pointing fingers and assigning blame, a list of ten lessons learned based on these findings is dressed up. These lessons apply to the JCR and its entire ecosystem, including authors, editors, peer reviewers, readers, its owner, and publisher.