Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A 2018 cell-biology paper retracted in 2022 after image-duplication findings, with a public retraction notice naming the responsible author and stating that co-authors were not implicated.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A correction (corrigendum) that updates a typo or a small numerical error without affecting the conclusions.
Editorial commentary
A retraction is the strongest post-publication editorial action a journal can take: it removes an article’s standing as part of the reliable scientific record. Retraction is meant as a correction of the record, not a punishment — the retracted article stays visible and citable, clearly watermarked, rather than being deleted, so the record of what was originally claimed remains available for scrutiny.
When retraction, specifically, applies
Per COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) Retraction Guidelines, version 2 (November 2019, DOI 10.24318/cope.2019.1.4) and ICMJE’s corrections-and-retractions recommendations, retraction is warranted when an error — honest or otherwise — is serious enough to invalidate or materially change the paper’s results, interpretations, or conclusions. Confirmed research misconduct (fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism), redundant or duplicate publication, unethical research (such as a study conducted without proper approval), or compromised peer review are also established retraction triggers. This is the same materiality test applied across the whole family of post-publication notices; for the full five-way comparison against correction, corrigendum, erratum, and expression of concern, see correction (corrigendum) rather than this page, which focuses specifically on retraction’s own mechanics and edge cases.
What a valid retraction notice must do
COPE guidance expects a retraction notice to state the specific reason for retraction, identify who is retracting the article (authors, editor, or publisher), and be linked bidirectionally to the original article in both directions so a reader lands on the notice from the original DOI and vice versa — the mechanism CrossMark and Crossref’s update-record schema exist to support. Crossref’s schema also supports a distinct partial_retraction type for cases where only part of a paper’s findings (a single figure, dataset, or claim) is withdrawn while the rest of the paper stands, rather than the whole article.
A retracted paper does not stop being cited
Retraction removes a paper’s standing, but it does not remove the paper from citation databases or reference lists already in circulation, and studies of citation behaviour have repeatedly found that retracted papers continue to be cited — often without acknowledgement of the retraction — for years afterward. This is one reason indexers increasingly surface retraction status directly at the point of citation (via Crossref metadata and tools like CrossMark) rather than relying on a citing author to have checked manually.
What retraction is not
Retraction is distinct from an author withdrawing an unpublished manuscript still in peer review (which never entered the published record to begin with), and from a publisher’s editorial removal of a paper for legal reasons (such as defamation), which follows a different process from COPE’s misconduct/error-driven retraction framework. It is also more severe than an expression of concern, which flags unresolved doubt without withdrawing the paper’s standing.
Tracking retractions
The Retraction Watch Database, run by the Center for Scientific Integrity and, since 2023, distributed via Crossref’s REST API, is the primary public index of retractions across publishers. See CASRAI’s guide to how a retraction actually happens for the end-to-end editorial workflow.
References
- COPE Retraction Guidelines, version 2 (November 2019), DOI 10.24318/cope.2019.1.4.
- ICMJE, Recommendations: Corrections, Retractions, Republications and Version Control of Articles.
Also known as
article retraction · withdrawal of publication
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
<role vocab="credit"
vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
vocab-term="Retraction"
vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/retraction" />{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "DefinedTerm",
"@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/retraction",
"name": "Retraction",
"identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/retraction",
"description": "The formal withdrawal of a published article from the literature by the journal, with a public retraction notice explaining the reason. An article is retracted when the journal determines that its findings are unreliable due to misconduct, honest error, or other invalidating factors.",
"inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/research-integrity#set",
"url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/retraction",
"sameAs": [
"article retraction",
"withdrawal of publication"
],
"license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
"publisher": {
"@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
},
"author": {
"@id": "https://casrai.org/#editorial-team"
},
"datePublished": "2026-05-21T02:22:52",
"dateModified": "2026-08-23T04:42:41",
"inLanguage": "en-GB",
"isAccessibleForFree": true
}
