Retractions in Neuroscience Literature: An Analytical Study Based on Retraction Watch Database

Abstract

This study analysed the retraction of scientific articles in neuroscience between 1977 and 2026. The Retraction Watch database was utilised as a source, and 1,244 formally retracted documents were selected for analysis. A comprehensive examination of the variables was conducted, encompassing the publication and retraction dates, author affiliation, country of publication and rationale for retraction. The findings indicated that the first retracted article was published in 1977 and the number of retracted papers where in single digit till 2006 (n=8) The number of retracted papers reached triple digit for the first time in 2021 (n=115) and a peak of 200 in 2023. It has been observed that the retractions in neuroscience were very low before 2000 and witnessed a gradual increase from 2005 to 2015. However, after reaching the peak in 2023, the trend sharply reversed, with the number of retracted articles falling to 115 in 2024 and 35 by 2025. China (n=438, 35.21%) represented the largest share of retracted publications, followed by the United States (n=370, 29.74%), and India (n=85, 6.75%). It has been observed that the top 10 countries either individually or with collaboration with other countries published 99.28% of the total retracted publications (n=1235) in the field of neuroscience. There were 986 single-country papers (79.26%) while 258 (20.74%) are multi-country papers which revealed that there is international collaboration in the field of neuroscience research. Retractions in neuroscience has been done by 491 journals and 15 conferences. The highest number of retractions was done by PLoS One (n=57). A large portion comes from major academic publishers like Elsevier, Springer Nature, and Wiley. The top 10 journals retracted 221 articles (17.77%) and Q2 journals retracted the highest (n=102) followed by Q3 journals (n=51), Q4 journals (n=38) and Q1 journals (n=30). The University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA is the topper with the largest number of retracted publications (n=12) followed by North China University of Science and Technology, China (n=11), Central Michigan University, USA (n=10), Kobe Gakuin University, Japan (n=9) and University of Pennsylvania, USA (n=9). Of all the retractions, 286 out of 1244 articles were suspected of unreliable results, comprising 22.99% of the total retractions. This proportion was notably higher than that of other reasons viz., data concerns (n=237), image duplication (n=206), image issues (n=140), data fabrication/falsification (n=116) and paper mill (n=115). This clearly shows that data integrity issues such as unreliable results, data concerns are the biggest problem in neuroscience research. The findings of the study would be highly useful for the stakeholders in the field of neuroscience.