In the study published in August 2025 Vivek Bhat, Sharanya Kaushik, Ashish Kumar, Shreyas Bellur, Ankur Kalra extracted all articles listed under subjects "(HSC) Medicine-Cardiology" and "(HSC) Medicine-Cardiovascular" from the Retraction Watch database. It was excluded preclinical studies and articles unrelated to clinical cardiology or cardiovascular surgery, for example, articles related to stroke, coagulation, or thoracic surgery. It was also excluded duplicates, expressions of concern, and corrections. Then, it was analyzed the country of origin, dates of publication and retraction/withdrawal, reasons for retraction/withdrawal, and author characteristics.

Out of 2,366 articles listed, we included 924 (39.1%). Retractions steadily increased from the first listed retraction in 1980, peaking in 2023 (n = 173, 18.7%). This trend persisted even when accounting for greater publication volumes over time, with 2023 having 178.4 retractions/withdrawals for every 100,000 indexed publications. 3,373 unique authors were listed, with 18 authors contributing to 10 or more included articles. China had 258 articles retracted (27.9%), Germany had 148 (16.0%), and the United States had 130 (14.1%).

Therefore, retractions and withdrawals have increased, with misconduct featuring prominently. There was often significant delay between publication and retraction, allowing articles to gain citations and influence literature.

Source https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772963X25002200

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