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Science publishing: The trouble with retractions

Nature volume 478, pages 26–28 (2011)Cite this article

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A surge in withdrawn papers is highlighting weaknesses in the system for handling them.

This week, some 27,000 freshly published research articles will pour into the Web of Science, Thomson Reuters' vast online database of scientific publications. Almost all of these papers will stay there forever, a fixed contribution to the research literature. But 200 or so will eventually be flagged with a note of alteration such as a correction. And a handful — maybe five or six — will one day receive science's ultimate post-publication punishment: retraction, the official declaration that a paper is so flawed that it must be withdrawn from the literature.

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  1. Richard Van Noorden
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Richard Van Noorden is an assistant news editor for Nature in London. For more analysis of retraction statistics, click here .

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Retraction Watch

COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) guidelines on retraction (PDF)

An online tool that tracks PubMed retractions, by bioinformatician Neil Saunders

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Van Noorden, R. Science publishing: The trouble with retractions. Nature 478, 26–28 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/478026a

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