Upholding Integrity, Part Two

Nettie Lagace, Program Director, Silverchair, served as the moderator for this program.

In anticipation of the discussion, the following questions have been posed to our speakers:

Discuss what a retraction is and what it is not; what is it intended to signal? What are related types of post-publication corrections and their impact/meaning vis-à-vis the publication they are associated with? Using the retraction taxonomy, can you describe this and the role it might play in scholarly communication?

Why are we hearing so much about retractions nowadays; are they always noteworthy? What has come about in the past five/ten years that makes the volume of retractions (within the broader context of research integrity) so apparent and newsworthy?

How do retractions come about? What is the "lifecycle" of a retraction? What is a user expected to "do" with information that something has been retracted?

What are any thoughts on retractions and AI? Conversely, is there any hope that AI could help?

Can you describe and contrast "nefarious" actions that result in retraction and "honest" actions that result in retraction?

How do efforts like NISO CREC and COPE recommendations (ICMJE recommendations?) [can you point out a few] help the community? If so, how you have contributed to these efforts, and were there any hurdles or roadblocks?

How can members of the scholarly community create and enforce incentives for good behavior? Do you have any examples to share? What are some examples of punishment/removal for specifically bad behavior? How can we foster and promote good actors and remove bad actors?

What is expected/anticipated from your own role in the scholarly landscape? What do you appreciate about your role? How do you expect your actions to continue to be necessary or how they might need to adapt?

Discuss the development of your own organization's policies in context of your roles as publisher and indexer? As a participating member of many programs that interface with these policies, what are the potential impacts or effects of them "downstream"?

Are there additional things that members of the community could do to support the current situation?

Related Information and Shared Resources:

PUBPEER - The online Journal club

COPE Retraction Guidelines - Guidance for editors on retracting articles: when should a retraction be considered, what to include in a notice, how quickly to issue a retraction, who should issue a retraction, and what to do when there is inconclusive evidence of a retraction. 

Forensic Scientomics: Error vs. Deception: Unpacking the 'Why' of Retractions (part ½ by Leslie McIntosh) - A description, an example, and a tool to use (freely available) to classify retractions

NISO RP-45-2024, Communication of Retractions, Removals, and Expressions of Concern (CREC) - The primary aim of this Recommended Practice is to establish best practices for metadata creation, transfer, and display for both the original publication and the statement of retraction, removal, or EoC, with the goal of facilitating the timely and efficient communication of information to all relevant stakeholders.

From Elsevier: The Journal of Advanced Research: Alarm: Retracted articles on cancer imaging are not only continuously cited by publications but also used by ChatGPT to answer questions by Tianshu Gu, Helin Feng, Minghui Li, Weikuan Gu, and Guiying Wang

Problematic Paper Screener - This website shows reports the daily screening of papers (partly) generated with Tortured phrases, SCIgen, Mathgen, and other issues such as Citejacked papers (Est. February 27th, 2021)

International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) Corrections and Version Control - Honest errors are a part of science and publishing and require publication of a correction when they are detected. Corrections are needed for errors of fact that should have been recognized at the time of publication. Matters of debate and evolving science and methods are not errors. Such issues can be best handled as letters to the editor, as print or electronic correspondence, as posts in a journal-sponsored online forum, or as new publications.

From Crossref: Crossmark- The Crossmark button gives readers quick and easy access to the current status of an item of content, including any corrections, retractions, or updates to that record.

Crossref Documentation: Retraction Watch - Research can be modified after publication, including being corrected or retracted. This is a natural part of the research process and important for accurately reporting changes.