Research Retraction and Its Communication

Background

According to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), retraction is a mechanism of science “for correcting the literature and alerting readers to articles that contain such seriously flawed or erroneous content or data that their findings and conclusions cannot be relied upon”, and its main purpose is “to correct the literature and ensure its integrity” (COPE Council, 2019, p. 4). The process of retracting a publication tends to be complicated (COPE Council, 2020; Williams & Wager, 2013) and often involves the participation of various stakeholders, depending on the specific problems with the retracted publications (Ranjan, 2018). Based on the extent of their involvement in handling retractions, retraction stakeholders can be categorized into three groups, namely the inner group (i.e., authors of retracted publications, research performing organizations [authors’ home institutions], and journal authorities [publishers and journal editors]), the intermediate group (i.e., research funding agencies, victimised peer researchers, competing peer researchers, and interested peer researchers), and the outer group (i.e., mistreated research participants, consumers of retracted research findings, and social sponsors of retracted research) (Xu & Hu, 2022c).