Retraction Notices of COVID-19 Publications: A Comprehensive Analysis

Abstract

The study focused on retracted research publications related to COVID-19 from 2020 to 2023. Two hundred eighty records were collected from the Web of Science and Scopus databases. Among these, 182 articles, including withdrawn papers, were selected for the study. The research aimed to identify the reasons for retraction, the number of citations received by retracted articles, the parties responsible for initiating retraction requests, and the top publisher with the highest number of retracted articles. The findings revealed that the journal editors mostly retracted journal articles. The most common reasons for retraction were related to scientific misconduct and issues with authorship. Springer and Elsevier were the publishers with the highest number of articles retracted. Geographic-based results indicated that single-author publications had a higher retraction rate compared to collaborations involving multiple authors. However, there was evidence of strong international collaboration between India and the USA. The study identified the top two core journals for retracted articles: Soft Computing and Journal of Physics: Conference Series. Additionally, publishers like Elsevier, Springer, and Wiley published 36 funded articles which were retracted.