{"title":"A data mining-based study on academic publication retractions in the 21st Century.","authors":"Qian Shen, Xueyan Gao, Xiaomeng Xiong","doi":"10.1080/08989621.2025.2528064","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p><b>Background:</b> The rising number of academic retractions has drawn increasing attention across the academic community. With the availability of large-scale retraction data from Crossref and Retraction Watch, systematic analysis of academic retractions has become feasible.<b>Methods:</b> This study examines all retracted academic publications from the 21st century up to June 4th, 2025. By using BERTopic, Apriori, and data visualization techniques, we've conducted a comprehensive analysis across six subjects with over 6,000 retractions of each subject.<b>Results and conclusions:</b> Our findings detail retraction counts, durations, topic trends, author nationalities, publishers, retraction reasons, and associations among these factors. The overall number of retractions has been continuously rising, with sharp increases in 2010 and 2020 to 2023, and the peak occurring in 2023. The primary reasons for retractions in biomedical studies are paper mills and issues with data and images, with third parties being the main initiators of investigations. In computer science and technology, retractions are mainly due to referencing and attribution issues, as well as unreliable results, with journals, conferences, and publishers often initiating the investigations. We also offer some suggestions that can help monitor research misconduct in academic publications.</p>","PeriodicalId":50927,"journal":{"name":"Accountability in Research-Policies and Quality Assurance","volume":" ","pages":"1-23"},"PeriodicalIF":4.0000,"publicationDate":"2025-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Accountability in Research-Policies and Quality Assurance","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2025.2528064","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"MEDICAL ETHICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Background: The rising number of academic retractions has drawn increasing attention across the academic community. With the availability of large-scale retraction data from Crossref and Retraction Watch, systematic analysis of academic retractions has become feasible.Methods: This study examines all retracted academic publications from the 21st century up to June 4th, 2025. By using BERTopic, Apriori, and data visualization techniques, we've conducted a comprehensive analysis across six subjects with over 6,000 retractions of each subject.Results and conclusions: Our findings detail retraction counts, durations, topic trends, author nationalities, publishers, retraction reasons, and associations among these factors. The overall number of retractions has been continuously rising, with sharp increases in 2010 and 2020 to 2023, and the peak occurring in 2023. The primary reasons for retractions in biomedical studies are paper mills and issues with data and images, with third parties being the main initiators of investigations. In computer science and technology, retractions are mainly due to referencing and attribution issues, as well as unreliable results, with journals, conferences, and publishers often initiating the investigations. We also offer some suggestions that can help monitor research misconduct in academic publications.
期刊介绍:
Accountability in Research: Policies and Quality Assurance is devoted to the examination and critical analysis of systems for maximizing integrity in the conduct of research. It provides an interdisciplinary, international forum for the development of ethics, procedures, standards policies, and concepts to encourage the ethical conduct of research and to enhance the validity of research results.
The journal welcomes views on advancing the integrity of research in the fields of general and multidisciplinary sciences, medicine, law, economics, statistics, management studies, public policy, politics, sociology, history, psychology, philosophy, ethics, and information science.
All submitted manuscripts are subject to initial appraisal by the Editor, and if found suitable for further consideration, to peer review by independent, anonymous expert referees.