eP156 - From Fraud and Falsification to Plagiarism: Why Are Colorectal Publications Retracted?

Purpose/Background: Trust in the scientific literature is at the foundation of all research. Too often retractions are issued by journals as a response to professional misconduct. We sought to identify patterns within retracted articles in the colorectal literature that could inform our understanding of the voracity of our surgical literature.Methods/Interventions: We reviewed the Retraction Watch database to identify all articles retracted between June 1996 and October 2023 within the colorectal literature. The authors identified common terms that are specific to colorectal literature. 956 database entries were identified from 23 search terms, with the most entries from “Rectal” (n=290) and the least for “Cecum” and “Hemorrhoids” (n=0). Each title was read separately by two independent investigators to judge if the article appeared to be relevant to colon and rectal surgery. After removing irrelevant titles and duplicates, 573 unique, relevant titles remained. This is 1.2% of Retraction Watch’s 47,931 unique titles. The authors reviewed the most frequent reasons for retractions, countries of origin, and impact factor of journals to assess the influence retracted articles have on the literature.Results/Outcomes: Retraction Watch lists 107 reasons that an article may have been corrected, retracted, or issued an expression of concern. Nearly all articles had more than one reason. The most common reason for action was "Concerns/Issues about data" at 43% (n=249). There are four different types of duplication categorized in the database (article, data, image, and text), and at least one form of duplication was present in 27% of articles (n=152). Some particularly heinous reasons for retraction included plagiarism in 7% of the articles (n=40) and falsification at 3% (n=16).74% (n=426) were completely retracted, while 24% (n=140) had an official expression of concern as their strongest action against.77% of the articles (n=443) were defined as Research Articles, while 13% (n=77) were clinical studies. Interestingly, just 2% (n=12) of the retracted articles were case reports.One pattern that immediately stood out was the geographic trend of the data. 53% (n=303) of the studies had China as one of the countries of origin. The United States was second with 10% (n=57). Every other country contributes to 5% or less of the articles.There were seven retracted articles from five journals with a Journal Impact Factor above 25. Of these seven, two had been cited more than 100 times. Other articles had been cited in textbooks before they could be retracted. In one circumstance, a study had even been cited 16 years after its retraction notice.Conclusion/

Discussion: Retractions from the surgical literature are rare but frequent enough to have an impact on the literature, and are not unique to colorectal literature. Unprofessional behavior is a very frequent reason for retraction. Retracted articles occur in all tiers of journals and effect our literature long after they are retracted.Table 1Reason for and frequency of the more common or heinous retractions