Plagiarism Allegations Account for Most Retractions in Major Latin American/Caribbean Databases

Area of Science:

• Bibliometrics
• Scientific Publishing
• Research Integrity

Background:

• Retraction notices are crucial for maintaining scientific integrity.
• Latin American and Caribbean scientific output is indexed in databases like SciELO and LILACS.
• Understanding retraction reasons in these regions offers insights into global research ethics.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate retraction notices in SciELO and LILACS databases.
• To categorize reasons for retractions, focusing on plagiarism.
• To analyze publication and retraction dates to determine time to retraction.

Main Methods:

• Searched SciELO and LILACS for retraction notices using specific keywords.
• Manually verified and categorized identified notices.
• Recorded publication/retraction dates and calculated time to retraction.

Main Results:

• Identified 31 retraction notices, 15 from journals indexed in Journal of Citation Reports (JCR).
• Plagiarism was the most cited reason for retractions in both JCR-indexed (6/15) and non-JCR (12/14) journals.
• The proportion of retracted articles in the SciELO database was approximately 0.005%.

Conclusions:

• Plagiarism is a significant driver of retractions in Latin American/Caribbean scientific literature.
• The findings suggest a global trend in the correction of scientific literature, extending beyond mainstream publications.
• Retraction notice analysis can inform discussions on research integrity in the region.