More than half of all retracted papers are from China, analysis finds
Study examined rates and reasons for 46,000 retractions across 10 publishers in Retraction Watch Database
Research papers that list Chinese institutions account for more than half of the retractions across 10 academic publishers, according to a new large-scale analysis.
The study, which has not been peer reviewed, was published on arXiv last month and examined 46,000 retractions issued by scholarly journals between 1997 and 2026 that were indexed by the Retraction Watch Database.
According to the study, there were 29,867 Chinese affiliations listed on these retractions — more than 91% of which don’t list international collaborators. Researchers in China produced only 16.5% of all research output during that time period, the study found, despite the country’s institutions being listed on more than 52% of retracted papers in the sample.