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  • How do retractions impact researchers’ career paths and collaborations?This link opens in a new windowMay 12, 2025
    About 46% of authors leave their publishing careers around the time of a retraction, a new study has found.
    SA Memon et al/Nat Hum Behav 2025

    Several studies have tackled the issue of what effect a retracted paper has on a scientist’s reputation and publication record. The answer is, by and large, it depends: The contribution the researcher made on the paper, their career stage, the field of study and the reason for the retraction all play a role.

    Three researchers from New York University’s campus in Abu Dhabi wanted to  better understand how a retraction affects a scientist’s career trajectory and future collaborations. Using the Retraction Watch Database, they looked at papers retracted between 1990 and 2015, and merged that data with Microsoft Academic Graph to generate information on researchers’ pre- and post-retraction publication patterns, as well as their collaboration networks. They also looked at Altmetric scores of retractions to factor in the attention a retraction got.

    From that data, they extrapolated if and when researchers with retracted papers left scientific publishing, and looked for trends in researchers’ collaboration networks before and after the retraction.

    Shahan Ali Memon, Kinga Makovi and Bedoor AlShebli wrote the article, “Characterizing the effect of retractions on publishing careers,” published in April in Nature Human Behavior. We asked them about their research, their findings and the inspiration for the study.

    Questions and answers have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

    RW: Your study looks across all disciplines. What trends did you find? And what differences did you find among the fields of science?

    Memon: Our analysis centered on STEM, particularly the natural sciences, and revealed a consistent pattern across fields: Retracted authors who remained in publishing careers retained and gained more collaborators than their matched counterparts who did not have retractions, with the largest gaps appearing in biology and medicine.

    RW: Of the researchers with retractions in your dataset, how many left science? What trends did you find in that data?

    Memon: We found that about 46% of the retracted authors leave their academic publishing around the time of the retraction, and that the early-career authors, those whose papers are retracted due to misconduct and plagiarism, and those with higher online attention were more likely to leave when experiencing a retraction. 

    We found that the retracted authors who remained in publishing careers did not suffer a reduction in the size of their collaboration networks post-retraction; instead, they built larger collaborations than their counterparts. However, this increase in size – both retaining more old and creating more new collaborations – was accompanied by qualitative differences, with retaining less senior, less productive and less impactful collaborators, which was balanced by gaining more impactful ones. 

    Note that these are the broad contours of the results and rely on averages using all fields and academic ages of authors. When we disaggregate these analyses by, say, seniority of retracted authors, we don’t find these patterns in all cases, but overall, these trends describe the results in broad strokes.

    RW: How do you account for the growth of collaboration networks for researchers who have retracted their work and continued to publish?  We have written in the past about “trust dividends” that seem to accrue to researchers who retract for honest error. Is the same thing at work here?

    Makovi: This is a great question, which our data can not address directly, and where qualitative work and future research would be helpful. Here are two hypotheses, which address this question from either the supply or the demand side of collaborators. 

    On the demand side, retracted authors might change their strategy in seeking collaborators. Specifically, prior research has documented that having a retraction might have a stigmatizing effect, and as we and others have shown, has negative impacts on various career outcomes. To counteract these, some retracted authors might act particularly agentically seeking collaborators to increase the volume and impact of their work. 

    The supply side may be how the environment around the retracted author changes: Senior colleagues in one’s department might become especially agentic in bringing retracted authors on as collaborators, especially if their retractions were due to a mistake, and/or if the retracted author experienced a retraction early on during their career. They might broker connections to help them along. 

    Both of these remain hypotheses that we are unable to test with the data at hand. There could be other explanations as well, therefore, we would take this explanation with a heap of salt, as it points beyond the analysis we conducted in the paper.

    RW: Were you able to tease out whether specific authors in your dataset had responsibility for the factors that led to retraction? And were you able to observe and study a “bystander effect”?

    Makovi: This is an excellent question, and I wish we had a straightforward answer. As part of our analysis we trained a large group of students to identify and hand-code retraction notices to categorize retraction reasons, and collect other data, for instance if the retraction was led by authors or journal editors. In the process we have read many retraction notices ourselves. It is a rare occasion that the notice doles out responsibility to specific authors. We only found a handful where this was the case. 

    What we have done is a disaggregation of our findings by author position, separating first, last and middle authors, which correlate with the typical roles in a paper, but we would not find it convincing to base “responsibility” on this. This, again, is an aspect where more qualitative work would come in handy.

    RW: Your study focuses on papers retracted between 1990 and 2015, and includes data up through 2021. Since then, the number of papers has gone up and so has the retraction rate. How do you think things may have changed since your analysis and since the cutoff of your datasets?

    AlShebli: We focused on this period to allow for a long enough observation window, up to five years after retraction, to assess career outcomes like collaboration patterns and attrition. Since then, several dynamics may have changed. For one, there’s been increased awareness and transparency around research integrity, and platforms like Retraction Watch have expanded coverage, possibly shifting the norms around retraction and its stigma. At the same time, with the rise of open science and preprints, new challenges around reproducibility and misconduct have also emerged. Not to mention the newly available AI tools that might shape how authors write, cite and conduct research more generally. These changes could affect both the frequency of retractions and how they impact scientists’ careers.

    That said, while the scale has grown, we believe that many of the structural dynamics we document, like career attrition or collaboration loss, might still hold today. We hope future research, using newer data, will build on our findings to track how these patterns evolve over time.

    Retraction Watch: Two of you (AlShebli and Makovi) had a paper retracted, which you mention in a note at the end of the paper. How did that experience inform this study? 

    AlShebli: Yes, two of us experienced a shared retraction firsthand, and we felt it was important to be transparent about that in the paper. That experience gave us a personal understanding of how painful and disorienting the process can be. We were very fortunate to have strong support from our colleagues and peers, which helped us recover and continue our research. But our experience, as the data shows, could have been very different. 

    That contrast really motivated this study. We wanted to understand how retractions affect scientists more broadly, especially early-career researchers, and to highlight the structural factors that can either mitigate or exacerbate the impact. Ultimately, our hope is to inform an evidence-based approach to research integrity that is perhaps more compassionate.

    RW:  How can scientists help early-career researchers move beyond a retraction?

    AlShebli: Retractions are a necessary self-correcting mechanism of science and scientific progress. They are meted out collectively, and as an institution, we do not believe that retractions should be done away with. The challenge lies in communicating what they mean to the public, and to fellow scientists. Our findings highlight just how vulnerable early-career researchers are in the wake of a retraction. They face higher rates of career attrition which can derail promising trajectories.

    One possible takeaway is that institutions, funders, and senior collaborators need to be more proactive in distinguishing between culpability and proximity. When early-career scientists are caught up in retractions they didn’t cause, they need support systems, such as mentorship, opportunities to re-establish their credibility, and clear institutional statements where appropriate. Transparency in responsibility and a culture that allows for recovery, rather than guilt by association, are crucial to protecting the next generation of researchers.


    Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on X or Bluesky, like us on Facebook, follow us on LinkedIn, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.


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  • Weekend reads: Majorana manipulation allegations; Norway’s most-published researcher committed misconduct; ‘second chance’ for convicted Harvard chemistThis link opens in a new windowMay 10, 2025

    Dear RW readers, can you spare $25?

    The week at Retraction Watch featured:

    Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 500. There are more than 59,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 300 titles. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers? What about The Retraction Watch Mass Resignations List — or our list of nearly 100 papers with evidence they were written by ChatGPT?

    Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

    • “‘Data manipulations’ alleged in study that paved the way for Microsoft’s quantum chip”: Our latest collaboration with Science
    • University finds Norway’s former most published researcher committed research misconduct. A link to our previous coverage
    • “‘Second chance’: convicted US chemist Charles Lieber moves to Chinese university.”
    • “Trump Withdraws U.S. Attorney Nominee” who alleged bias in medical journals. 
    • “Two gynecologists punished for research misconduct” after endometriosis study contained patient cohort that was over half male
    • “Scientific societies to do climate assessment after Trump administration dismissed authors.”
    • Researchers use Retraction Watch as a template to investigate “how science communicators and journalists approach (hybrid) debate about scientific norms.”
    • Gynecologist performed research on women “without their consent during procedures.”
    • “My departure from the U isn’t tied to plagiarism allegation,” says Rachel Hardeman. 
    • Researcher “advocates for a paradigm shift in how editors handle communications with authors during the peer review process.”
    • “Can Germany rein in its academic bullying problem?”
    • “Handling conflicts of interest concerns more than transparency,” a commentary on a paper discussing “funder and authors’ financial conflicts of interest” in drug and device trials.
    • “P hacking — Five ways it could happen to you.”
    • “Characteristics of Biomedical Retractions in China.” “The rising threat of predatory journals and paper mills in respiratory medicine and research.”
    • A study spanning “eight years of empirical research on research integrity.”
    • “‘Publish or perish’ culture fuelling research misconduct in India.”
    • “Asian Tricks and Research Misconduct: From Orientalism and Occidentalism to Solidarity against Audit Cultures.”
    • COPE’s statement on “undue influence” on journals by “any political, corporate or social entity.”
    • “Google Scholar is (still) doing nothing about citation manipulation.”
    • Three Bulgarian rectors who “were investigated for plagiarism” last year still hold their titles. A link to our coverage of another accused dean.
    • “Fraudulent Research Falsely Attributed to Credible Researchers—An Emerging Challenge for Journals?” 
    • “eLife retains academic support despite losing Impact Factor.”
    • “Extraordinarily corrupt or statistically commonplace? Reproducibility crises may stem from a lack of understanding of outcome probabilities.”
    • Researchers analyze the “distribution of questionable publications and journals along with their interplay with countries.”
    • “The do’s and don’ts of scientific image editing.”

    Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on X or Bluesky, like us on Facebook, follow us on LinkedIn, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.


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  • Journal investigating placebo effect study following Retraction Watch inquiryThis link opens in a new windowMay 9, 2025

    An Elsevier journal is investigating a paper by a controversial author after a Retraction Watch inquiry about the article. The article concluded that “placebo effects have a significant impact on observed outcomes” in both placebo and treatment groups in clinical trials. 

    The senior author of the paper is Harald Walach, whose name may be familiar. In one paper, now retracted, Walach and his coauthors claimed COVID-19 vaccines killed two people for every three deaths they prevented. In a different paper, also retracted, Walach and his colleagues claimed children’s masks trap carbon dioxide; they later republished the article in a different journal. He lost two papers and a university affiliation in 2021. 

    One of his latest papers, “Treatment effects in pharmacological clinical randomized controlled trials are mainly due to placebo,” appeared online December 27 in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology

    Walach’s group analyzed 30 clinical trials for each of five conditions — osteoarthritis, depression, migraines, sleep disorders and irritable bowel syndrome — and analyzed the improvement in both the placebo and treatment groups. The authors conclude “that the placebo-effect is the major driver of treatment effects in clinical trials that alone explains 69% of the variance.”

    Stephen Rhodes, a researcher at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center in Ohio, criticized the study in a letter to the editor in February, citing a “number of errors that lead to some sweeping conclusions.” In the letter, Rhodes wrote those leaps “reflect a misunderstanding of what a ‘treatment effect’ is,” noting that in a placebo-controlled trial, the measure can’t be “due to placebo.” 

    We asked Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, a sleuth and research fellow at the University of Wollongong in Australia, to take a look at the paper. 

    Meyerowitz-Katz called the work “bizarre” and told us the results seem to indicate “simply being in a clinical trial is the main component of healing.” The studies included in the analysis had “very low average treatment effects,” meaning they didn’t show a huge benefit for the interventions tested. 

    The clinical trials included had another issue: one was retracted in 2018 after journal editors realized  all its participants had been enrolled and randomized on the same day. “I do not think that a meta-analysis which includes work retracted nearly a decade ago can be relied on as evidence,” Meyerowitz-Katz said.

    When he attempted to replicate the methods, Meyerowitz-Katz wasn’t able to do so. The researchers claimed to have taken one of the formulas from a previous paper; however, the referenced paper used a regression model, and the formula was not listed, he said. 

    Meyerowitz-Katz also pointed out a potential undisclosed conflict of interest. Walach runs the Change Health Science Institute, which promotes “homeopathy and various COVID-19 conspiracy theories,” he said.

    Harald Walach

    Walach, in response to Meyerowitz-Katz’s comments, called the term “conspiracy theory” “an analytically void terminology, because it is dependent on the political mainstream view, which is in turn dependent on political power.”

    He did not respond to any of Meyerowitz-Katz’s critiques of the paper.

    Meyerowitz-Katz touched on many of the same issues Rhodes had raised in his letter. Rhodes questioned if the results really suggest there is “limited space for effects due to pharmacological substances,” quoting from the original paper. He also wrote by weighing clinical trials by study size rather than standard deviation, the researchers are “throwing information away.” 

    The researchers responded to Rhodes in their own letter to the editor, conceding they should have used “treatment response” rather than “treatment effect” in the title “to avoid confusion.” The authors also argued they had demonstrated “whenever a treatment is very effective, so is the improvement in the placebo group and vice versa.”

    Retraction Watch sent questions to the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, including the above critiques of the paper. Andrea Tricco, the co-editor-in-chief of the publication, told us the journal was investigating the concerns and was “treating this as a matter of highest urgency.”

    Stefan Schmidt, the corresponding author of the paper, told us his group has been asked to give “a detailed reply within 30 days.”


    Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on X or Bluesky, like us on Facebook, follow us on LinkedIn, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.


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...by browsing this "Glossary of Scholarly Communication Terms"

5-Year Journal Impact Factor

Citations to articles from the most recent five full years, divided by the total number of articles from the most recent five full years. "How much is this journal being cited during the most recent five full years?"

Aggregate Cited Half Life

Indicates the turnover rate for a body of work.

Altmetrics

Altmetrics go beyond normal citation metrics to include alternative impact measures including downloads, views, blogs and, tweets.  Altmetrics expands the community of comment beyond the limits of bibliometrics.

Article Influence

The Eigenfactor score divided by the number of articles published in journal.  "I know how impactful the journal as a whole is, but what about the average individual article in the journal?"

Article Level Metrics

Impact measures at the article level, e.g. number of citations to a specific article.

Author Identities

Codes that identify the works of an author as distinct from an author with the same or similar name.

Author Impact Factor

The impact of a specific author based on the number of citations over time.  h-index is an example of an author impact factor. See the Research Impact page for more information.

Author Metrics

Google provides its own calculations for an author's h index, including a number of variations based on it's indexed content.

Bibliometrics

In the context of impact factor, measures of citations at the journal and article level.

Cited Half-Life

"The cited half-life is the number of publication years from the current year which account for 50% of current citations received." (Ladwig, P., & Sommese, A. (2015). Using Cited Half-life to Adjust Download Statistics. College and Research Libraries. https://doi.org/10.7274/R03N21B4)

Creative Commons License

A means to retain copyright while proactively granting permission to reuse the work under specific conditions such as attribution. See this website for more information on the various licenses available.

Eigenfactor

Similar to the 5-Year Journal Impact Factor, but weeds out journal self-citations.  It also, unlike the Journal Citation Reports impact factor, cuts across both the hard sciences and the social sciences.

Embargo

Embargoes for articles is the length of time between when the article is first published and when it becomes available through channels other than the publisher. This could mean becoming open access through requirements such as the NIH public access mandate or being available through a content aggregator such as Academic Search Premier.  Embargoes for dissertations and thesis is the length of time between when the dissertation is accepted and when it is made available. Authors embargo their dissertations when they hope to publish a revised version as a book or as book chapters.

Fair Use

Specific exemptions to the exclusive rights of the copyright holder.  Fair Use (section 107) includes common academic activities such as the ability to review, criticize, quote, make a copy of an article for personal use.

g-index

Proposed by Egghe in 2006 to overcome a bias against highly cited papers inherent in the h-index. The g-index is the "highest number of papers of a scientist that received gg2 or more ciations" (Schreiber)

h5-index

This metric is based on the articles published by a journal over 5 calendar years. h is the largest number of articles that have each been cited h times. A journal with an h5-index of 43 has published, within a 5-year period, 43 articles that each have 43 or more citations.

h-Index

Proposed by J.E. Hirsch in 2005 the h-index is intended to serve as a proxy of the contribution of an individual researcher. The h index is calculated through a formula that considers the number of publications and the number of citations per publication. See this blog entry for more information on how to calculate it.

i10-index 

Introduced by Google Scholar in 2011 the i10-index measures an athors publications with at least 10 citations.

Immediacy Index

The average number of times a journal article is cited in its first year.  Used to compare journals publishing in emerging fields.

Impact Factor

A measure of often a journal or specific author is cited. The intent is to assign a number as a proxy for the contribution of a publication or researcher to the field.

Infringement

In the context of copyright, using more of a copyright work than is allowed by law.

IPP-Impact per Publication

Also known as RIP (raw impact per publication), the IPP is used to calculate SNIP. IPP is number of current-year citations to papers from the previous 3 years, divided by the total number of papers in those 3 previous years.

Journal Cited Half-Life

For the current Journal Citation Reports year, the median age of journal articles cited.  "What is the duration of citation to articles in this journal?"

Journal Immediacy Index

Citations to articles from the current year, divided by the total number of articles from the current year.  "How much is this journal being cited during the current year?"

Journal Impact Factor

Citations to articles from the most recent two full years, divided by the total number of articles from the most recent two full years.  "How much is this journal being cited during the most recent two full years?" See Journal Citation Reports for more information.

Journal Metrics

Lists top publications based on their "five-year h-index and h-median metrics."

License

A license is a contract. Signing a license can mean you are giving your copyright to a publisher. 

Notre Dame Honor Code

 Notre Dame's Honor Code outlines the responsibilities of students and faculty for ethical conduct of teaching and research. The code forbids use of material, without attribution, whether or not it is copyrighted.

Open Access

The ability to read a publication freely without confronting a paywall.

ORCID

Open Researcher and Contributor ID, a researcher identification system not tied to a specific vendor. The ORCID is intended to disambiguate author/researcher names across publishers and across all areas of contribution.

Orphan Works

Works still believed to be in copyright but there is no way to identify or contact the copyright owner, e.g. photographs of studio no longer in business.

Plagiarism

Presenting someone else's work, ideas or concepts as your own.  Plagiarism is an ethical concept.  Copyright violation is a legal concept.

Public Domain

Works no longer in copyright or never covered by copyright.

ResearcherID

The author identification system supported by Thomson Reuters, now Clarivate Analytics.

Retraction

When an article is withdrawn from a publication it is retracted. Articles may be retracted for a number of reasons including plagiarism; self plagiarism; flawed research methods; ethics issues (especially human subjects); or fraudulent data. Retraction Watch gives daily updates on known instances of retractions.

Rights of the copyright holder

The copyright law (17 U.S.Code Section 106) grants copyright holders the right to reproduce the work, prepare derivative works, distribute copies, perform and display perform the work. 

Self-Citation

Referencing one's own publications. There is nothing wrong with citing one's own research but is not considered as meaningful as citations by others.

SJR

This metric doesn't consider all citations of equal weight; the prestige of the citing journal is taken into account.

SNIP-Source-Normalized Impact per Paper

SNIP weights citations based on the number of citations in a field. If there are fewer total citations in a research field, then citations are worth more in that field.

SPARC addendum

Publisher agreements may give authors some rights to reuse their works, the SPARC addendum is an addendum to the publisher agreement giving the authors specific additional rights to their works including the ability to make coies available for noncommercial use. 

Transformative Work

A fair use under copyright law. Use of a copyright work that changes the purpose and intent of the original work.

Work for hire

Works made in the normal course of employment such as the text of this LibGuide. When a work is created as part of your job your employer owns the copyright unless both parties have an agreement in place to allow you to retain the copyright.  Notre Dame's Intellectual Property Policy  describes the works where the University claims exclusive rights and where they waive the right.  In general if you write an article or a book the University allows you to keep the copyright but other intellectual property such as patents belong to Notre Dame.