Global Retracted Research Publications: A Bibliometric Study

Abstract

The present study used a bibliometric technique to draw the patterns in retracted publications over time. A sample of bibliographic data of 12876 documents up to the year 2021 was extracted from the Scopus database. The analysis found that the number of retracted documents has significantly increased in the last decade, with most documents in 2010 (4377) followed by 2011 (3534). The study found that most retracted documents were from China, followed by the United States and India. The highest number of 70 retracted documents were from the author Nazari, A. of Islamic Azad University, Iran, with a rate of 4.04 retractions per total document published. The other authors were Ueshima, H. (68), Otake, H. (45), Sato, Y. (45), and Iwamoto, J. (41) from Japanese Institutions. The highest rate of retraction per total documents were of Ghoranneviss, M., Islamic Azad University, Iran (24.65), followed by Boldt, J., Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen (24.04), and Shamshirband, S. National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, Taiwan (18.54). The majority of the source type was found to be Conference Proceedings (11096, 60.71%), followed by Journal Publications (7159, 39.17%). The study found the maximum number of retracted publications were in the Conference Proceedings (11096, 60.71%), followed by Journals (7159, 39.17%).