A recent article in Nature noted that there has been a massive increase in the number of retractions of papers in the life sciences.
Many retractions result from fraud, but others are caused by “reproducibility failures, missing ethical clearances, peer review fraud, and institutional gaps in oversight,” according to Sabuj Bhattacharyya, research integrity officer at the Institute for Stem Cell Science and Regenerative Medicine in Bangalore.
Between 1976 and 2023 thousand of life sciences were retracted for various reasons. The largest number, well over 6000, were from China, followed by the USA, India, Japan, and Germany. Other disciplines have also seen an increase in retractions of papers by Indian researchers.
The National Institutional Research Framework has announced that it will penalize universities whose researchers are responsible for papers that are retracted. An analysis by India Research Watch found that many retractions resulted from plagiarism, data manipulation or fake peer review.
The NIRF awarded negative points to institutions for large numbers of retractions in the 2024 rankings, with penalties increasing from this year onwards.
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