“Research exceptionalism” in the COVID-19 pandemic: an analysis of scientific retractions in Scopus

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study aimed to outline the profile of retractions of scientific articles on COVID-19 published in journals indexed in the Scopus database between 2020 and 2021. To analyze the data, we used a bibliometric technique, with the Bibliometrix package in the R-Studio software, and descriptive statistics. Twenty-nine retractions were analyzed, and we found that the most common reasons for retraction were related to ethical issues and that 68.97% of authors have previously retracted articles. We concluded that there appears to have been a change in the publication policies of journals, which resulted in an increase in scientific retractions related to COVID-19 during the study period.