RESEARCH

AND
PUBLICATION ETHICS

Computer Science and Engineering

University Institute of Engineering and Technology
Panjab University, Chandigarh – 160014, INDIA
2022

Submitted To: Submitted By:

Dr. Sunil Bansal Biponjot Kaur
PhD Scholar
CSE Dept.
a) Various reasons for retraction of an article
Retraction is removing an article from the scientific record at any point after its
publication. Retraction is distinct from withdrawal, which occurs prior to publication.
Also, in contrast to withdrawal, retractions are visible to the scientific community, as
the original papers are typically preserved as part of the publication record.
Articles can be retracted for a wide range of reasons, from unintentional errors to a
variety of ethical misconduct:
 Honest errors
Honest errors leading to retraction can include things such as unintentionally using
incorrect data or an inappropriate or misleading data analysis technique. Another
example of an honest error might be unintentional duplicate publication; for
example, if an article was accidentally submitted to two different journals by two
different co-authors, and this error was only discovered after publication.
 Ethical misconduct
Ethical misconduct is a much more common reason for retraction and is typically
identified by someone other than the author(s) of the paper. Examples of
intentional misconduct that can lead to retraction include the use of fraudulent
data, text plagiarism or image manipulation.
 Authorship issues
Authorship disputes can also lead to retraction; for example, if individuals were
listed as authors on a published manuscript without their involvement or consent.
 Peer review fraud
Another, less well-known, reason for retraction is peer review fraud. In recent
years, journals worldwide have become aware of the existence of peer review
manipulation networks (typically done by predatory publishers) that work behind
the scenes to fraudulently promote the publication of certain scientific papers.
These networks function by suggesting peer reviewers to journals upon submission
of a paper, supplying fraudulent contact details (that in many cases are similar
enough to authentic researchers’ details to appear accurate) and then submitting
fraudulent, highly positive peer review reports, typically leading to rapid
publication.
 Copyright issues
Copyright infringement, whether intentional or unintentional, can also be the
reason for retraction. For example, if a paper reproduces figures that were
previously published in another paper and/or journal without having obtained
permission from the original publisher, this is considered a violation of copyright,
and could lead to retraction of the paper.
 Non-disclosure of conflicts of interest (COIs)
Another interesting cause for retraction is not declaring relevant competing
interests. While a COI may not always affect the content of a paper, if a journal
feels that association with a company, for instance, may have unduly influenced the
study, this can be cause for concern. If this association is not declared, this raises a
red flag that is likely to lead to an investigation, and possibly to retraction.
  Ethics violations
Finally, research ethics violations are a clear motivation for retraction. This
generally takes the form of failing to seek and obtain ethical approval for
performing a study involving animal and/or human subjects prior to carrying it out.
If this is discovered after the paper was published, this is likely to lead to retraction.

b) Investigate world regions/countries by contribution to retracted articles.

Out of 169 countries, China’s contribution is the highest to the retracted articles. There
is a total of 37147 retracted articles till May 2022 and there are 16970 retracted articles
which are from China (45% of Total retracted articles). After China, the US is in the
second position with 5174 retracted articles. India is in the third position with 2029
articles.

c) Investigate subject wise contribution to retracted articles.

There are seven major subjects in research: Business/Technology, Basic life sciences,
environment, health sciences, humanities, physical science, and social science. Among
these subjects 4 subjects have more than 10000 retracted articles and basic life sciences
have the highest number of retracted articles with 13,046 articles. The second highest
contributed subject is business/technology with 11,192 articles. The lowest retracted
articles subject is social sciences with 5497 articles.
d) Investigate 3 retracted articles, in your subject domain, and analyse the
reason for retraction.
The paper titled “Deep Learning Based Multiple Object Detection” published in Journal
of Physics under IOP Publishing house in the year 2021 was retracted on 23 Feb 2022.
There were various reasons like issues about references/attributes, fake peer review,
Investigation by journal/publisher, investigation by third party and randomly generated
content due to which the journal was retracted. The journal was written by 5 authors
and the country contributed to this retraction was India.
The paper titled “An efficient machine learning approach for activity recognition’
published in Journal of Physics under IOP Publishing house in the year 2021 was
retracted on 23 Feb 2022. There were various reasons like issues about
references/attributes, fake peer review, Investigation by journal/publisher,
investigation by third party and randomly generated content due to which the journal
was retracted. The journal was written by 3 authors and the country contributed to this
retraction was India.
The paper titled “A Survey on Recent vision-based Gesture Recognition’ published in
Intelligent Industrial Systems under Springer Publishing house in the year 2016 was
retracted on 16 Mar 2017. There were various reasons like Plagiarism of Article,
investigation by journal/publisher and objection by author due to which the journal was
retracted. The journal was written by author Haitham Hasan Badi and the country
contributed to this retraction was Iraq and Malaysia
e) Discuss the role of a researcher, Institute, and the publisher to avoid
retraction of articles.
Role of researcher to avoid retraction of articles:
 Follow the relevant ethics guidelines
It is important to familiarize yourself with the ethical guidelines issued by the
recognized body in your field of expertise. Studies deemed unethical because of the
treatment of animals or issues of privacy surrounding studies on people, to take
just two examples, may be retracted.
 Clearly state any conflicts of interest (COIs)
Transparency is just as important for authors as it is for publishers and journals;
readers must have all the information available to them to evaluate the limitations
of the study. Therefore, ensure you disclose all COIs at the time of submission.
 Take measures to avoid plagiarism
When writing up your research, be sure to reference correctly and
comprehensively; else, you may end up being guilty of plagiarism. Even when using
or referring to material written or produced by yourself, the work must be correctly
referenced. Self-plagiarism is a form of plagiarism and may lead to article retraction
or at least redundancy.
 Declare all author affiliations
All authors and their affiliations must be clearly and correctly indicated.
 Select a journal wisely
Finally, it is important to consider carefully which journal to submit your paper to. A
reliable and reputed journal will have a rigorous editorial or review process in order
to identify any experimental or calculation errors, thus minimizing the risk of your
article being retracted further down the line.