Retraction is the act of withdrawing a published document (article, book, book chapter, report, etc.) either by the publisher or by the author. This can happen when someone confesses to academic malpractice knowingly or unknowingly.
The major reasons for retraction are the following.
Retraction by the author
● Inaccurate result
● Faulty experiment or methodology
● Unethical practices by the journal
● Compromised data/content
● Compromised peer review
Retraction by the
publisher
- ● Inaccurate result
- ● Faulty experiment and methodology
- ● Unethical practices by the author
- ● Compromised data
- ● Compromised peer review
- ● Compromised editing
- ● Falsification of data
- ● Image manipulation
- ● Violation of publication ethics
- ● Unethical use of AI tools
- ● Plagiarism
Who is responsible for retraction?
The primary
responsibility of retraction lies with the publisher itself. The publisher
should take utmost care in publishing accurate and ethically sound documents. A
journal/publisher that claims to uphold the peer-review system should not
compromise its publication policy.
Who are affected by retraction?
Retraction affects
all the stakeholders simultaneously. The community of researchers and
academicians, authors and publishers are burdened with the garbage publication.
What are the major reasons for retraction?
Some of the major
reasons for retraction are the following.
- ● Lack of proper training in publication
- ● Ignorance of publication ethics
- ● Predatory Publications
- ● Open Access Publications that provide fast publication
- ● Paid publications that are busy making a fortune
- ● Ranking and accreditations focused on certain publications
- ● Universities providing promotion, increments and rewards based on publication
Should Institutions be penalised for retractions?
In any crime, a penalty
is awarded only to the person who is committing the crime. The transitive
effect of crime refers to the ripple effect or indirect consequences that crime
has on individuals, communities, and society as a whole, beyond the immediate
victim and offender. However, as no punishment is given to the family of a
criminal, the institutions of the author/editor who is part of a retracted
publication should not be punished. Nevertheless, those institutions that are
funding or providing incentives to their members for publishing in predatory
and spurious journals should be penalised.
In this context,
the recent announcement of awarding negative weightage to the institutions for
the retracted papers is unethical and is stemming out of pure ignorance.
Further, how can institutions be awarded negative weightage for citations from
retracted papers? This is absurd.
Instead, the
Ministry of Education, Government of India, should take necessary steps to
blacklist academic publishers who are publishing content without proper peer
review. Further, an author who is publishing compromised content should be
awarded proper academic penalties. The role of the Institutional Academic
Integrity Panel is very important in this regard.
How to deal with retraction?
In a general sense,
retraction is positive. Removing erroneous content from the public space is
always welcome. If the author takes initiative in retraction, she/he should be
appreciated for it. If the publisher retracts the publication on its own,
institutions should conduct proper enquiries of those authors involved in those
publications and take appropriate actions. In any case, the benefits that were
given to the author should be withdrawn with retrospective effect, including
the award of a degree.
