Aspects and Collaboration Patterns of Retracted Papers as Evidence of Research Misconduct in Iran and Foreign countries

The purpose of this study was to identify organizations and countries with the highest number of retracted productions, as well as to determine the upward trend or downside of the production of this type of works globally and to compare these organizations in Iran and the world in terms of the number of retracted productions, as well as the pattern of collaboration among the organizations and countries that have been published with the most retracted articles, have been reviewed.

This research was carried out with a scientometrics approach and data collection from the Web of Science database. Excel, Hist cite, Vos viewer, and NodexL software were used to analyze the data.

The results of this study showed that the amount of production of retracted products in recent years has been increasing and Iran has not good condition due to the number of scientific products discredited (7th rank of the world). Also, some organizations such as Islamic Azad University are ranked first in terms of this type of work. Although Harvard is ranked second in terms of the total number of articles and the total number of retracted articles, it is ranked 8th among the top organizations in terms of the proportion of total retracted articles to all papers and among organizations with the most significant number of retracted articles, it’s rank is 10th.

 In order to measure and compare organizations, only the calculation of the number of articles and the number of scientific productions is not considered an important indicator, but the calculation and comparison of the ratio of papers and retracted papers can also change their position relative to each other. Considering the relatively unfavorable situation of Iran in terms of the number of retraction, it is recommended that researchers be familiarized with exemptions from the validity of research works and that the responsible units such as the research deputy of the organizations have penalties for eliminating the credit quality of defective and of poor quality so that the name of the country as the highest ranked country does not count as the number of denied credits.