Living data · updated 2026-08-14
Retraction statistics
Computed from the 4,650,012 research papers indexed in the CiteDash catalog. Retraction flags come from the open scholarly catalogs the platform checks before any paper enters a bibliography.
5,717
retracted papers in the catalog
12.3
retractions per 10,000 papers
4,650,012
papers in the catalog
Retracted papers by publication year
Papers retracted to date, grouped by the year they were originally published. Recent years keep accumulating retractions: investigations take years, so young papers' counts will rise.
| Year | Retracted | Per 10,000 | Distribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 251 | 7.9 | |
| 2016 | 330 | 9 | |
| 2017 | 392 | 11.1 | |
| 2018 | 409 | 10.8 | |
| 2019 | 484 | 11.4 | |
| 2020 | 477 | 10.7 | |
| 2021 | 919 | 19 | |
| 2022 | 1,199 | 25.4 | |
| 2023 | 431 | 9.5 | |
| 2024 | 559 | 11.8 | |
| 2025 | 260 | 5.5 | |
| 2026 | 3 | 2.1 |
Venues with the most retracted papers
A high count is not by itself an indictment: large venues publish more of everything, and a high count can also mean a venue that actively cleans up its record.
| Venue | Retracted papers |
|---|---|
| PLoS ONE | 351 |
| Heliyon | 335 |
| Scientific Reports | 177 |
| Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience | 170 |
| Journal of Healthcare Engineering | 139 |
| Security and Communication Networks | 135 |
| Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing | 98 |
| Oncotarget | 85 |
| Mathematical Problems in Engineering | 76 |
| Computational and Mathematical Methods in Medicine | 73 |
| Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy | 71 |
| BioMed Research International | 70 |
Method and scope
The numbers on this page are aggregates over the CiteDash catalog, which indexes metadata for 4,650,012 research papers, with coverage concentrated on works published from 2015 onward. Retraction status comes from the open scholarly catalogs (OpenAlex, drawing on Crossref and Retraction Watch data). Years with thin coverage in our catalog are omitted from the by-year table rather than shown with misleading denominators.
These figures describe this catalog, not the whole scholarly record: absolute counts will differ from databases with different coverage. Rates per 10,000 are the safer number to quote. Statistics recompute daily; this page notes the date above.
Cite this page: CiteDash Retraction Statistics, citedash.ai/retraction-stats, updated 2026-08-14. Free to reuse with attribution (CC BY 4.0).
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