Purpose Retraction of published literature is an increasingly important mechanism for protecting the scholarly record in today’s accelerated publishing environment. Analyzing retracted articles offers unique insights into how research communities maintain academic integrity. Taiwan is a major contributor to global medical research and has sustained public and media interest in academic integrity. Yet, no comprehensive analysis of retractions involving Taiwan-affiliated authors has been conducted. This paper therefore aimed to systematically examine retractions in Taiwanese medical research.
Methods Data extracted from both PubMed and the Retraction Watch Database were analyzed to determine the number of retracted articles and their reasons for retraction.
Results In total, 181 retractions of medical research articles with at least one Taiwan-affiliated author were included in the analysis, with the number of retractions steadily increasing since the first retracted article was published in 1992. Taiwanese medical research has the 9th highest retraction rate among the top 21 countries in medical research publications (6.08 retractions per 10,000 publications). However, this rate is lower than those of other highly productive Asian countries, including China, Korea, Japan, and India. Fifty-eight (32.04%) of the retractions involved international collaboration, most commonly with authors affiliated with the United States and China. Over the past 33 years, the reasons for retraction have gradually shifted from plagiarism or data manipulation to compromised peer review systems, ethical issues, and authorship disputes.
Conclusion The results reveal that retractions in Taiwanese medical research are evolving and distinct from those in neighboring regions. This finding highlights the need to examine Taiwanese medical researchers’ perspectives on academic integrity and current publishing trends.
This report discloses the journal supporting policy in Taiwan. At the moment, the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) not only gives financial support to each academic research projects but also plays an important role to the quality of many scientific journals. The MOST has established a competitive evaluation system to assess the quality of scientific journals. According to the policy of MOST, each academic association could apply financial support for one scientific journal. Around 60 journals receive support from MOST every year.
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Knowledge production and internationalisation of research in Taiwan: a new watershed? Sheng-Ju Chan, Chia-Yu Yang, Hung-Chun Tai Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management.2020; 42(2): 245. CrossRef