On the Dearth of Retractions in Social Work: A Cross-Sectional Study of Ten Leading Journals

In recent decades, there has been an increase in the number of retractions across the biomedical and social sciences. A high rate of retractions undermines the integrity of scholarly journals and threatens the credibility of scientific disciplines. It is unknown how common retractions are within the field of social work. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of retractions among ten leading social work journals. This cross-sectional study employed three search strategies. First, each journal’s website was searched using the keywords “retracted” and “retraction”. The same procedure was employed, for each journal, using Google Scholar’s advanced search function. Finally, the Retraction Watch Database was queried using the name of each journal. None of the 196 results produced from these search strategies resulted in the identification of a single retracted article. Reasons for this absence are explored and recommendations to enhance the integrity of social work research and journals are discussed.