“Retraction Watch” Retractions
Is opening a database of retractions helping to make news at Retraction Watch?
One of the more striking symptoms of the current self-immolating age of “open” is encapsulated by this paragraph from a recent and excellent article in the Verge:
The journal Accountability in Research has seen a 60 percent surge in submissions this year, according to David Resnik, an associate editor at the journal. Ironically, he has been besieged by likely AI-generated papers about fraudulent academic papers that have mined public data compiled by the organization Retraction Watch.
Just as with other public databases, Retraction Watch’s (RW’s) has been exploited in a way that is already leading to retractions.
- So much for maintaining the integrity of their Center for Scientific Integrity . . .
The RW database was officially launched in 2018. Papers based on the data have been coming out more often as time has passed. It’s not an avalanche, however, with 30 published in 2025, according to a quick PubMed search, but it’s an increasing trend.
These are the ones making it through to publication. Apparently, there is a larger problem behind the scenes with editors besieged by AI slop generated using the RW data.
And now we are starting to see retractions of papers based on data generated by Retraction Watch’s reporting, where it comes full-circle.
One paper using RW data and retracted from Accountability in Research was by two authors from Switzerland, Paul and Melissa Sebo.