Retraction Trends in Top 10 NIRF-Ranked Indian Universities: A Web of Science Analysis

The study aims to investigate the scientific retractions from the top ten Indian universities in the NIRF ranking 2024, concentrating on retracted articles, associated retraction notices, and citation trends. The data is manually extracted from the Web of Science (WoS) for citation analysis. The study found that Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) had the most retractions, followed by Banaras Hindu University (BHU). Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham (AVV) had the fewest retractions. Compromised/fake peer review is the most common reason for retraction (47.76%), followed by duplication (18.30%), data issues (12.05%), and plagiarism (8.03%). The Journal of Ambient Intelligence and humanized computing had the most retractions, with Springer as the leading publisher. Additionally, collaborations of greater than or equal to 7 authors per article are the most retracted articles. The total citations of all articles are 5391, in which 3628 are citations before retraction and 2303 are the citations after retraction. Moreover, across all universities, the total percentage drop is 36.52%, which indicates that the citations for the retracted articles collectively decreased by 36.52% after retraction. Retraction notices reveal that publishers were the primary initiators, followed by editors and publishers together. Furthermore, analysis shows that 94.66% displayed a retraction watermark, while 3.11% lacked a watermark. These findings elucidate retraction trends and underscore the necessity for enhanced research integrity protocols within Indian academia.