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Research Integrity
Reactions: Retractions of Ethiopian-affiliated papers
February 22, 2025
| A version of this story appeared in
Volume 103, Issue 5
Letters to the editor
Another perspective on Ethiopian retractions
A recent C&EN report claimed that Ethiopia has the highest scientific paper retraction rate, based on an analysis posted on Zenodo by data scientist Achal Agrawal. The study examined global retraction trends from 2022 to 2024 using data from the Retraction Watch Database, which ranked Ethiopia at the top—with an alarming rate exceeding 12%—followed by Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, China, and Egypt. The report suggested that while some retractions result from honest errors, a significant proportion may be attributed to research misconduct. Additionally, it emphasized that countries experiencing a rapid increase in publication output tend to show a corresponding increase in retractions.
Retractions
Retractions of papers with Ethiopian affiliations spiked in 2023 but fell drastically the next year.
Source: Retraction Watch Database.
However, this ranking contradicts the 2023 Nature publication by Richard Van Noorden, which identified Saudi Arabia as the country with the highest retraction rate, without listing Ethiopia among the top eight. One possible explanation for this discrepancy is methodological differences:
Van Noorden’s study analyzed retractions over 2 decades (2003–23) and included only countries with more than 100,000 publications.
Agrawal’s study focused on only 3 years (2022–24) and did not apply a minimum publication threshold.
Given these inconsistencies, Ethio-BioMed Hub, as an advocate for ethical biomedical research in Ethiopia, independently reanalyzed the data to understand the discrepancies and underlying causes using raw data from the Retraction Watch Database. The full dataset of retracted papers was examined, with a specific focus on Ethiopian-affiliated retractions. You can view a subset of the data in the accompanying graph.
Key findings from the data
▸ A total of 443 Ethiopian-affiliated papers were retracted between 2004 and 2024.
▸ Seventy-one percent (n = 314) of retracted papers were from 2023.
▸ Eighty-five percent of these retracted papers were published in Hindawi journals.
▸ About 77% of these retractions are affiliated with Ethiopian and Indian institutions. However, the primary contributing institutions remain unclear.
▸ After the 2023 surge, retraction rates dropped sharply.
These findings suggest that Ethiopia’s high retraction ranking in Agrawal’s report may be misleading, as it primarily reflects a temporary surge driven by the Hindawi mass retractions, which resulted from systematic manipulation and a compromised peer review process, as noted in Van Noorden’s study. However, further investigation is needed to determine which countries’ research institutions were primarily affected by the retractions and whether Ethiopia’s disproportionate impact was due to financial barriers limiting access to reputable journals or weak institutional oversight.
Dereje Abate Negatu
Nutley, New Jersey
UPDATE
Richard Van Noorden has confirmed that the reason his 2023 study didn’t include Ethiopia among the list of countries with the highest retraction rates was because the country didn’t meet the publication threshold of 100,000.
Chemical & Engineering News
ISSN 0009-2347
Copyright © 2025 American Chemical Society
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