Analysis of Retracted Open Access Publications by Indian Authors: Insights from Scopus Database

Retracting scientific papers helps maintain the integrity of scientific literature by preventing flawed research from being considered credible in the future. This study seeks to understand better the factors leading to the retraction of open-access academic articles by Indian researchers. The Scopus database was searched between 2010 and 2023 to extract the open-access retractions. The Retraction Watch database was consulted to determine the reason for the retractions. The present study categorized retraction causes into eight distinct categories. The findings indicate that the year 2022 had the highest number of retractions (N=778, 66.04%). The most prevalent grounds for retraction were peer review manipulation (64%, N = 754), duplication (12.81%, N = 151), and plagiarism (8.99%, N = 106). The findings reveal that retracted papers with 2–6 authors were more likely to be withdrawn owing to peer review manipulation, duplication, and plagiarism. The retraction process for data duplication, falsification/and fabrication took approximately four years. Retracted articles were published in 317 unique journals; 237 had impact factors ranging from 0.1 to 96.2. Nineteen journals retracted a total of 795 (67.48%) papers. Most open-access retractions were issued to co-authored papers (N=1129, 95.84%). Nine publishers issued (N=1111, 94.31%) total retractions. Springer Nature issued the highest number of retractions (N=718, 60.95%), followed by IOP Publishing Ltd. (N=238, 20.20%) and Wiley issued (N=72, 6.11%) retraction notices.