Retractions relevant to COVID-19: does the retraction rate jump during the pandemic?

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: Since the outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019, the scientific community has acted promptly before many publications appeared in the scientific literature. It posed a question of whether the expedited research and publication process would impair the research integrity, further leading to the rise in retractions. Hence in this study, we aimed to examine the characteristics of retracted articles related to COVID-19 and provide some insight into the scientific publishing of COVID-19 literature. METHODS: In this study, by searching Retraction Watch on 10 March 2022, the largest database on retraction, we included 218 COVID-19-related retracted articles. RESULTS: We found that the retraction rate of COVID-19 research was 0.04%. Of the 218 papers, 32.6% were retracted or withdrawn with a retraction notice giving no indication of the reason, and 9.2% due to honest mistakes made by authors. Retractions owing to misbehavior by authors comprised 33% of those retractions. DISCUSSION: We came to the conclusion that the changed publication norms certainly led to a number of retractions that could have been circumvented, the post-publication review and scrutiny were also enhanced.