Characteristics of retracted research papers before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

Objectives: During the COVID-19 pandemic, a large number of research papers were published, and some of them were retracted. The present study aims to reveal the characteristics of retracted papers before and during the pandemic.

Methods: The study investigated 24,542,394 publications from 1999 to 2022 and analyzed the profiles of retracted papers from the perspectives of year, disease category, country, and journal.

Results: Retraction rates were generally increasing at least until 2019, and were the highest for "Neoplasms." The number of publications for "Infections" and "Respiratory Tract Diseases" dramatically rose during the COVID-19 pandemic; however, the retraction rates in the two categories or of COVID-19-related papers were not especially high compared to other diseases. The association with retraction was strongest for China in most disease categories, whereas for COVID-19 papers, other countries showed higher retraction rates than China. In recent years, retracted papers have become less likely to be published in high-impact journals.

Conclusion: The COVID-19 pandemic does not seem to affect the retractions of research papers much. We should keep monitoring retractions and analyze the effects of pandemics for better science.