While Elsevier outcompetes other publishers in terms of sheer volume, it also has the lowest retraction rate and highest rate of reinstating articles among nine top publishers of scholarly articles, a recent study has found. The study also found a tenth publisher to be an outlier in terms of reasons for retraction.
“Every publisher has their own retraction profile and retraction rates vary by two orders of magnitude,” Jonas Oppenlaender, author of the February preprint and a researcher at the University of Oulu in Finland, told Retraction Watch. “This reflects different editorial cultures and detection strategies, not just different levels of misconduct.”
Oppenlaender examined data from the Retraction Watch Database spanning 1997 to early 2026 to identify the top nine publishers with the most retractions. He also included the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), “because it is a major professional-society publisher that has not previously been examined in cross-publisher retraction studies,” he wrote in the preprint.
By his calculation, Elsevier’s retraction rate was 3.97 articles per 10,000 published. This compared to 5.46 for SAGE, 6.21 for Wiley, 6.50 for Taylor & Francis, 9.06 for Springer Nature, 17.70 for IEEE, 26.82 for PLOS and 283.77 for IOS Press.
Readers of Retraction Watch won’t be surprised the highest retraction rate showed up at Hindawi, at 320.02 per 10,000. Wiley acquired the publisher in 2023 and the high number of retractions – including over 11,000 from late 2022 to early 2024 – is “consistent with the mass retractions following Wiley’s acquisition,” Oppenlaender wrote.
Of the 98 articles in the dataset reinstated following retraction, 86 were published in Elsevier journals. That publisher restored 1.3% of retracted articles. Only Taylor & Francis came anywhere close, with a reinstatement rate of 0.4%.
The most common reasons for retraction among the top nine publishers were issues with results and/or conclusions, third-party involvement or concerns, plagiarism, data concerns, and problematic peer review. Yet Oppenlaender found seven of the 10 most common retraction reasons – including misconduct, plagiarism, and data concerns – were “entirely absent” from ACM’s record.
Of 354 retractions by ACM in the dataset, all but two were retracted as a result of compromised peer review of two sets of conference proceedings, with no retractions before 2020. As we reported in 2022, ACM retracted more than 300 conference papers at once.
Oppenlaender contended in the preprint that ACM moves at least a portion of its retracted articles to a “dark archive,” which “means that some retracted or removed content may not appear in any public database, including Retraction Watch[‘s], potentially leading to under-reporting of ACM retractions.”
“This doesn’t fit with reality,” Scott Delman, ACM’s director of publications, told us by email. “Articles that are ‘removed’ for one of the reasons indicated in our [Retractions] Policy would still have citation pages available along with a Notice of Removal.”
As for ACM being an anomaly when it comes to reasons for retraction, “What I would say is that our threshold for proving misconduct is ‘extremely high,’” Delman said. “At any given moment, ACM is investigating well over 100 allegations of misconduct.”
In 2023, ACM claimed it would retract two papers by a deepfake pioneer for misconduct. They still have not been retracted. When we asked for an update on these articles, Delman told us “an appeal was filed as per ACM’s Appeals Policy, and this case has been awaiting a formal review by the ACM Appeals Committee.”
Oppenlaender also found the timing between publication of a paper and retraction varied from weeks to years, with PLOS’ “lag” averaging over four years. IEEE’s relatively short time between article publication and retraction — 41 days — “shows that it is feasible to issue fast retractions on a large-scale,” he said. Nearly all of its retractions, over 99%, were completed within a year, according to the preprint.
Both Elsevier and Springer Nature showed “steady growth” of retraction rates over the past decade. As for geography, Springer Nature had a cluster of retractions for researchers in India classified as “Rogue Editor,” which “is largely unique among the publishers examined,” Oppenlaender said.
Our database uses the “Rogue Editor” classification for retractions caused by false or forged editor credentials, or when an editor subverts at least one process under their purview. The cluster corresponds with mass retractions we have covered.
For each of the nine publishers with the most retractions, China-affiliated authors “account for the largest share of retractions at every publisher examined, reflecting systemic pressures,” according to the preprint. In terms of national affiliations of authors on retracted works, China accounted for 52.54%, India for 7.25%, the U.S. for 5.72%, Saudi Arabia for 2.83%, Iran for 2.51%, and the U.K. for 2.10%.
With reporting by Avery Orrall
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Part of the explanation re: ACM’s nonsense is that they can’t be bothered to add metadata to their DOIs like they’re supposed to, so even their few recent retractions don’t show up.
But of course, this study reflects the reality of automated tooling trying to find retractions: authors won’t know if an ACM paper they cite has been retracted for the same reason. Metadata is important. One would imagine a computer science society would know this.
I wonder why MDPI, a large Chinese publisher, was omitted from the list.
MDPI is a Swiss publisher.
because they don’t retract anything
This is not necessarily true. The most recent retractions:
https://www.mdpi.com/2079-6412/16/5/610
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/16/10/5011
https://www.mdpi.com/2079-6439/14/5/60
https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6740/14/5/134
https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/27/10/4400
The bigger probem are places that pull papers without presenting a higher truth than what is proved in the paper pulled citing internally an absurd reason and publicly attempting to blame a bot.
What about Frontiers and MDPI?
“While Elsevier outcompetes other publishers in terms of sheer volume, it also has the lowest retraction rate and highest rate of reinstating articles among nine top publishers of scholarly articles, a recent study has found.”
As a casual reader you might never get a feel for this sort of behaviour. Over the years you might get a sense that there is something special about Elsevier. It is really important that such studies are published. It does put numbers on the quality of Elsevier.
Elsevier is based in the Netherlands, which is usually associated with good quality products. Elsevier is a highly profitable company. The Dutch government is never going to sanction Elsevier, or require it to pass quality control tests to obtain a licence to publish. Win, win for Elsevier, lose, lose for science. I fear that there is no way out.
Why Springer is missing in 5.1 Retraction Patterns in a Multi-Publisher Landscape
5.1.1 Comparison of publishers? Could the author, please , explain.
The introductory paragraph of that section ends with: “Several publisher-specific patterns deserve attention.”
That section did not discuss all 10 publishers. Obviously, data for Springer is included throughout the paper.
You can also post comments like this on PubPeer where the authors are more likely to see.
Wrong answer. The question was why Springer was not included into a summary.
Is this part of your “why does everyone pick on us campaign?”
I assure you that it is not working.
It is not a part of anything. It is a scientific question. You are not a scientist. It is not clear why you are involved. This is the end of our discussion with you
😹 The Royal Tailors weren’t the ones to point out that the Emperor had no clothes.
Simple answer: Section 5.1.1 was part of a Discussion, not a summary.
Funny. Why it was not a part of discussion?
Section 5.1 is “Discussion”.
Section 5.1.1 is therefore part of the Discussion.
This doesn’t seem difficult.
Guys, you are not answering the question. There is no point to continue a conversation. Hopefully, the author will see our point and the paper will be corrected for publication
Your point (if I understand correctly) is when the author made observations about the publisher-specific retraction patterns of six publishers and (appropriately) described these in a paragraph of the Discussion section, he should have extended that to the other four publishers, especially Springer – despite the absence of any Springer-specific retraction pattern! – and (inappropriately) shifted the paragraph to a Summary section.
Is that a fair explanation?
I don’t know how highly the author will value this advice on ‘How to Structure a Scientific Paper’.
It looks like they just posted 30 more retractions and a smaller number of corrections. No wonder they are cranky.
Your point is obvious and feeble.
In your recent unsigned editorial that attempts to whitewash the historical track record of the journal, you specifically call out the news team at Springer/Nature for not printing nice things about you and hint (again) at some ulterior motive:
“In October 2024, we discussed the Argos data with Features Editor at Nature, Richard Van Noorden, and proposed conducting an analysis of different journals and publishers in the “post-tool era”. He agreed that it is an interesting subject: “Regarding: how integrity tools are now changing the publishing industry. I am interested in this topic! At the moment I know I have too much work on to devote time to it, but perhaps could look again in the new year? “In August 2025, during communication with Miryam Nadaff, the Nature reporter, we presented the same data and asked for her feedback and opinion. As of today, no response has been received in either case, and it appears that Nature has limited interest in pursuing this discussion. We are left to wonder why.”
https://www.oncotarget.com/article/28852/text/
Are you a registered financial advisor? Typically, those individuals are quite capable of recognizing the underlying message. It is just a remark. No comments are necessary. Please.
Is it too difficult for you to click the “REPLY” button when replying to a comment, inside of starting a new chain every, single, time?
I am not sure why my profession is relevant.
The authors analyzed Springer just like the others. Your complaint appears to be that they did not discuss Springer enough. Most journals would not spend days publicly arguing over how many paragraphs a preprint devoted to a particular publisher.
But thank you for the entertainment. 😸
Well, we did not argue, we just pointed to the questionable point. You are the one who cannot stop here. A man, whose profession is not relevant … We stop here, you could continue..
I am still not sure why my profession is relevant.
The more interesting question is why a person with no scientific or medical training has repeatedly identified problems in papers published by the journal that later resulted in corrections and retractions.
Perhaps that reflects on the journal’s quality-control, not on the profession of the person who flagged the problems. Perhaps the reputational issues are well-earned. Perhaps.
I just realized that I might be communicating with someone misrepresenting themselves as speaking for the Oncotarget journal. Could you identify yourself by name to reassure readers that this is an official journal representative? For example, are you Olga or Zoya perhaps?