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Research Integrity

Ethiopia has highest rate of scientific paper retraction

Countries with the highest retraction numbers in new analysis had sharp rise in publication output

by Dalmeet Singh Chawla, special to C&EN
January 23, 2025

Researchers in Ethiopia have a higher percentage of their scientific papers retracted than researchers in any other country, according to a new analysis published in the online repository Zenodo. 

A collage showing the word “retracted” on top of scientific papers.
Credit: Madeline Monroe/C&EN/Shutterstock

The analysis, posted Jan. 12, examines the rates at which papers were retracted from the scientific literature from 2022 to 2024. 

Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, China, and Egypt follow Ethiopia as the countries with the highest rate of retractions, according to the study, which was conducted by Achal Agrawal, a data scientist based in Chhattisgarh, India. Agrawal founded India Research Watchdog, a site that keeps tabs on scientific research conducted in India. 

“Some countries might figure high on this list as they may have an active community of science sleuths working to weed out the bad papers,” Agrawal writes in the study. France, for example, is one of the world’s leaders in research integrity, he notes, and the work of sleuths resulted in a lot of retractions in 2024.

While some studies could have been retracted because of honest errors, the study suggests that “a good proportion” of retractions are due to some sort of misconduct. The analysis acknowledges that researchers in countries with high retraction rates can come under enhanced scrutiny, which itself may lead to even more retractions. 

The other countries making up the top 10 are predominantly in the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent. That may be because those countries have milder penalties for research misconduct than Western nations do.

Countries that had high retraction rates in the analysis period typically saw a sharp rise in their total publication output in the 5 years through 2023, the study found. Such a rise in output by a country without concurrent development in its research infrastructure is usually a sign of a large number of bogus studies that eventually lead to more retractions, the paper suggests. 

“This calls into question the current incentive system which promotes quantity over quality,” the paper says.

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