Retracted publications and communication practices: Insights from Indian research

Objectives •The annual number of retracted publications is increasing, and the underlying reasons are evolving. Scientific misconduct is becoming more prominent, alongside compromised peer review processes and the emergence of paper mills. •The relationship between fraudulent activities and the types of email addresses used by authors has come under scrutiny. •This study analyses India’s retracted publications, with particular attention to the types of email addresses used by corresponding authors, the characteristics of the institutions involved, the institutional and disciplinary patterns of the publications, and the reasons for the retractions. Data •Data were retrieved from the Retraction Watch (RW) database and combined with records from the CWTS in-house version of the Web of Science (WoS) database. •Only retracted ‘article’ or ‘review’ from the period 2004-2023 containing at least one corresponding author affiliated with an Indian institution with an email address were considered. •Email addresses were categorized into two groups: ‒Institutional email addresses, issued to individuals with verified affiliations (e.g., university staff) ‒Non-institutional email addresses, freely or commercially obtainable from providers such as Gmail or Outlook Reasons for retraction Out of 88 distinct reasons for retraction listed in RW, a subset of 24 was identified as indicators of fraudulent activity specifically attributable to authors and regrouped into four categories: •Category 1 (CAT-1): Instances of plagiarism or duplication involving articles, data, images, or text, as well as euphemistic descriptions of such misconduct. •Category 2 (CAT-2): Fake peer review or concerns related to the peer review process. •Category 3 (CAT-3): Falsification or fabrication of data, images, or results, along with related issues. •Category 4 (CAT-4): All other forms of author misconduct not covered in the previous categories. Retracted publications and communication practices: Insights from Indian research Marc Luwel1, Kiran Sharma2,3, Parul Khurana4, and Nees Jan van Eck1 1Centre for Science and Technology Studies, Leiden University, The Netherlands; 2School of Engineering & Technology, BML Munjal University, India; 3Center for Advanced Data and Computational Science, BML Munjal University, India; 4School of Computer Applications, Lovely Professional University, India luw[email protected].nl Use of non-institutional email addresses •79% of corresponding authors with an Indian affiliation in retracted publications use non-institutional email addresses. •This is the highest proportion among the top 20 countries with the most retracted publications. •In India’s retracted publications, the use of non-institutional email addresses is 10% higher than in its publications indexed in the Web of Science. •There are notable differences across affiliation types: corresponding authors affiliated with Indian colleges, hospitals, and state universities use non-institutional email addresses 10% more frequently than the national average. Indian retracted publications over time •Between 2004 and 2023, 1,726 retracted publications were identified with at least one corresponding author with an Indian affiliation. •The spike in retractions in 2020—totaling 483—is largely due to the bulk retraction of 332 publications with Indian corresponding authors in the Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing, attributed to a 'rogue editor' and 'fake peer review’. Indian retracted publications by main field