How Ten Publishers Retract Research

2026-02-22

AI Summary

This study addresses significant disparities in retraction practices among academic publishers, which undermine the consistency and transparency of scholarly record correction. Drawing on the Retraction Watch database, we conduct a systematic bibliometric analysis of 46,087 retractions issued by ten major publishers between 1997 and 2026, offering the first quantitative comparison of retraction rates, reasons, temporal trends, and geographic distributions. Findings reveal up to two orders of magnitude difference in standardized retraction rates, with Chinese-affiliated authors representing the largest share. Notably, ACM’s retractions are heavily concentrated in a single incident, lack commonly cited reasons, and reflect a high retraction threshold coupled with non-public dark archiving—practices that markedly deviate from Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines and raise concerns about transparency. This work provides empirical evidence to inform more standardized and comparable retraction mechanisms.

Technology Category

• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Data Compression
• Natural Language Processing: Ethics — Bias, Fairness, Transparency & Privacy
• Computer Vision: Image and Video Retrieval

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Data transparency and provenance
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Web evaluation methodologies and metrics
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Web data provenance, reliability, and authenticity

Abstract

Retractions are the primary mechanism for correcting the scholarly record, yet publishers differ markedly in how they use them. We present a bibliometric analysis of 46,087 retractions across 10 major publishers using data from the Retraction Watch database (1997-2026), examining retraction rates, reasons, temporal trends, and geographic distributions, among other dimensions. Normalized retraction rates vary by two orders of magnitude, from Elsevier's 3.97 per 10,000 publications to Hindawi's 320.02. China-affiliated authors account for the largest share of retractions at every publisher. Retraction lags and reason profiles also vary widely across publishers. Among the ten publishers, ACM is an outlier in its retraction profile. ACM's normalized rate is mid-range (5.65), yet 98.3% of its 354 retractions are related to one incident. Seven of the ten most common global retraction reasons (including misconduct, plagiarism, and data concerns) are entirely absent from ACM's record. ACM's first retraction dates to 2020, despite a catalog dating to 1997. ACM self-describes its retraction threshold as "extremely high." We discuss this threshold in relation to the COPE retraction guidelines and the implications of ACM's non-public dark archive of removed works.

Problem

• retractions
• publishers
• scholarly record
• retraction practices
• academic integrity

Innovation

• retraction practices
• bibliometric analysis
• publisher comparison
• COPE guidelines
• dark archive