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Original Article
- Trends, causes, and collaboration patterns of retracted Taiwanese medical research: a bibliometric study
- Joshua Wang
- Sci Ed. 2025;12(1):35-42. Published online February 11, 2025
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.6087/kcse.360
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Abstract
PDF - Purpose
Retraction of published literature is an increasingly important mechanism for protecting the scholarly record in today’s accelerated publishing environment. Analyzing retracted articles offers unique insights into how research communities maintain academic integrity. Taiwan is a major contributor to global medical research and has sustained public and media interest in academic integrity. Yet, no comprehensive analysis of retractions involving Taiwan-affiliated authors has been conducted. This paper therefore aimed to systematically examine retractions in Taiwanese medical research.
Methods
Data extracted from both PubMed and the Retraction Watch Database were analyzed to determine the number of retracted articles and their reasons for retraction.
Results
In total, 181 retractions of medical research articles with at least one Taiwan-affiliated author were included in the analysis, with the number of retractions steadily increasing since the first retracted article was published in 1992. Taiwanese medical research has the 9th highest retraction rate among the top 21 countries in medical research publications (6.08 retractions per 10,000 publications). However, this rate is lower than those of other highly productive Asian countries, including China, Korea, Japan, and India. Fifty-eight (32.04%) of the retractions involved international collaboration, most commonly with authors affiliated with the United States and China. Over the past 33 years, the reasons for retraction have gradually shifted from plagiarism or data manipulation to compromised peer review systems, ethical issues, and authorship disputes.
Conclusion
The results reveal that retractions in Taiwanese medical research are evolving and distinct from those in neighboring regions. This finding highlights the need to examine Taiwanese medical researchers’ perspectives on academic integrity and current publishing trends.
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