Women’s Representation as Authors of Retracted Scientific Papers

Peer reviewed papers are retracted when they are considered an invalid source of scientific knowledge and, hence, should be completely removed from the scientific record. According to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE),1 papers should be retracted in the following circumstances: 1) clear evidence for misconduct or honest error, 2) duplicate publication without proper reference, 3) plagiarism, and 4) unethical research. Despite the COPE proposal, there is no consensus definition of retraction, and the terms retraction, correction, withdrawal, removal, expression of concern, erratum, and corrigendum are often used interchangeably. Although the reasons for retraction are not always clear, they are often provided in retraction notices. The most common reason for retraction seems to be research misconduct (i.e., fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism), which accounts for about 60% of retractions.2 Although retractions are rare, their absolute number and relative proportion of published papers have been increasing over the past decades,3,4 with current estimations suggesting that about 4 in 10,000 papers end up being retracted. However, the proportion of retractions varies by publisher, with high impact journals having the highest retraction rates.5 The cause for this recent rise in retractions is not clear but seems to be the effect of growing scientific integrity, rather than an actual increase in scientific misconduct.6 Evidence suggests that researchers and journal editors have also become more aware of and more proactive about scientific misconduct, without a true increase in cases of fraud. The gender balance of authors of retracted papers remains largely unknown as it has received […]