Retractions in Arts and Humanities: an Analysis of the Retraction Notices

TL;DR

This study analyzes retraction notices in arts and humanities, revealing issues with their identification, consistency, and clarity, and highlighting the need for standardized practices in issuing retractions.

Contribution

It provides a systematic analysis of retraction notices in arts and humanities, uncovering inconsistencies and suggesting the need for standardization in retraction communication.

Findings

Many retraction notices are not easily identifiable or accessible.

Notices vary greatly in content and detail.

Similar notices are used for different retractions.

Abstract

The aim of this work is to understand the retraction phenomenon in the arts and humanities domain through an analysis of the retraction notices: formal documents stating and describing the retraction of a particular publication. The retractions and the corresponding notices are identified using the data provided by Retraction Watch. Our methodology for the analysis combines a metadata analysis and a content analysis (mainly performed using a topic modeling process) of the retraction notices. Considering 343 cases of retraction, we found that many retraction notices are neither identifiable nor findable. In addition, these were not always separated from the original papers, introducing ambiguity in understanding how these notices were perceived by the community (i.e., cited). Also, we noticed that there is no systematic way to write a retraction notice. Indeed, some retraction notices presented a complete discussion of the reasons for retraction, while others tended to be more direct and succinct. We have also reported many notices having similar text while addressing different retractions. We think a further study with a larger collection should be done using the same methodology to confirm and investigate our findings further.