Universities in China have been asked to declare all their retractions and investigate cases of misconduct. A recent analysis conducted by Nature shows that, since 2021, there have been over 17,000 retractions involving Chinese co-authors.
Chinese universities have been given a deadline of February 15th to complete a nationwide audit of retracted research papers and investigate cases of research misconduct. They are required to submit a comprehensive list of all academic articles retracted from Chinese and English-language journals in the past three years and explain the reason for retraction. The Ministry of Education’s Department of Science, Technology and Informatization had issued a notice on November 20th, 2020, demanding universities to investigate misconduct cases.
The government launched the nationwide self-review in response to Hindawi, a London-based subsidiary of the publisher Wiley, retracting a large number of papers by Chinese authors. These retractions, along with those from other publishers, “have adversely affected our country’s academic reputation and academic environment”, the notice states.
A Nature analysis shows that last year, Hindawi issued more than 9,600 retractions, of which the vast majority — about 8,200 — had a co-author in China. Nearly 14,000 retraction notices, of which some three-quarters involved a Chinese co-author, were issued by all publishers in 2023.
This is “the first time we’ve seen such a national operation on retraction investigations”, says Xiaotian Chen, a library and information scientist at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, who has studied retractions and research misconduct in China. Previous investigations have largely been carried out on a case-by-case basis — but this time, all institutions have to conduct their investigations simultaneously, says Chen.
Tight schedule
The Ministry of Education in China issued a notice which prompted universities to initiate a review of papers published by Chinese co-authors. The notice contained lists of retractions that were already known, but also requested that universities report any retractions not yet listed. University departments posted bulletins on their websites to inform researchers that they must submit their retractions by specific dates, mostly in January, in order to give universities time to collate and present the data.
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According to an analysis by Nature, over 17,000 retraction notices for papers published by Chinese co-authors have been issued since January 1st, 2021, which is the start of the review period specified in the notice. The analysis only included English-language journals and used the Retraction Watch database, along with retraction notices from the Dimensions database, and received assistance from a computer scientist at the University of Toulouse in France. It is not clear if the official lists contain the same number of retracted papers.
Shu Fei, a bibliometrics scientist at Hangzhou Dianzi University in China, believes that the timeframe for submitting the information is quite tight. The ministry gave universities less than three months to complete the self-review, and this was further shortened by the academic winter break, which usually begins mid-January and ends after the Chinese New Year. This year, the Chinese New Year was on February 10th.
“The timing is not good,” he says. Shu expects that universities are most likely to submit only a preliminary report of their researchers’ retracted papers included on the official lists.
Wang Fei, who specializes in research-integrity policy at Dalian University of Technology in China, believes that universities will work hard to submit their findings on time because the ministry has set a deadline.
Chen, in charge of the policy, says that researchers who have retracted papers will need to explain whether the retraction was due to misconduct such as image manipulation, or an honest mistake such as identifying errors in their own work. Universities must then investigate and penalize misconduct. If a researcher fails to declare their retracted paper and it is later discovered, they will face punishment, according to the ministry notice. Chen mentions that the cost of not reporting is high. “This is a very serious measure.”
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Punishments for those who fail to report are not known yet, but China’s National Health Commission released the results of its investigations into a set of retracted papers in 2021. Punishments included salary cuts, withdrawal of bonuses, demotions, and timed suspensions from applying for research grants and rewards.
The notice clearly states that the first corresponding author of a paper is responsible for submitting the response. Li Tang, a science- and innovation-policy researcher at Fudan University in Shanghai, China, believes that this requirement will largely address the issue of researchers avoiding responsibility for collaborative work. The notice also emphasizes due process. Researchers accused of misconduct have the right to appeal during the investigation.
Wang believes that the notice is a good approach to addressing misconduct. She says that previous efforts by the Chinese government stopped at issuing new research-integrity guidelines, which were poorly implemented. When government bodies launched self-investigations of published literature, they were narrower in scope and lacked clear objectives. This time, the target is clear — retractions — and the scope is broad, involving the entire university research community.
“Cultivating research integrity takes time, but China is on the right track,” says Tang.
What next
It is not certain what action the ministry will take with the numerous submissions they have received. Wang believes that since the retraction notices are already accessible to the public, publishing the compiled lists and reasons for retraction could be beneficial. She hopes that a similar review will be conducted every year to increase pressure on authors and universities to monitor research integrity.
Shu says that the ministry’s response will indicate how seriously they take research misconduct. If the ministry does not take further steps after the Chinese New Year, the notice could be an attempt to address the reputational damage caused by the mass retractions last year. However, the ministry has not yet responded to Nature’s questions about the misconduct investigation
Chen believes that regardless of what the ministry does with the information, the reporting process itself will help reduce misconduct because it is “embarrassing to the people in the report.” However, it may primarily affect researchers publishing in English-language journals as retraction notices in Chinese-language journals are rare.