Happy 14th birthday, Retraction Watch – and what a year it was

We know we say this every year, but the last 12 months have been big ones for Retraction Watch as we celebrate our 14th birthday on August 3. We’ve continued breaking big stories and maintaining The Retraction Watch Database – while also taking big steps toward financial sustainability.

In September, we announced that the Database – which as of today contains more than 50,000 retractions – became completely open with its acquisition by Crossref. The move also allowed us to hire Gordon Sullivan, another staff member who works on the Database, and covers the costs of maintaining the Database 100% for at least five years.

We hope regular readers by now have noticed the site runs faster, with no downtime. That’s thanks to the volunteer efforts of Michael Dayah and Karl Lehenbauer, who over the past year or so have pitched in to help us with back-end platform and software issues. We can’t thank them enough for their ongoing support.

Some other highlights: 

• Exposing what one critic called a “nasty” publishing scheme at a dental school to boost its rankings
• Revealing paper mills – the scourge of today’s publishers – have been bribing editors at prestigious journals to ensure their clients’ work is published
• An exclusive showing companies are preying on doctors desperate to publish papers to obtain U.S. residencies 
• Continuing to have an impact, prompting the resignation of deans in Nevada and Indonesia, the retraction of a flawed paper in economics, and the retraction of 80 papers at once for compromised peer review
• Hiring two terrific interns, Dawn Attride and Avery Orrall. 
• Publishing editorials in The BMJ, “How bibliometrics and school rankings reward unreliable science,” and Science, “Rooting out scientific misconduct,” as well as op-eds in The Guardian, El Pais, and The Washington Post.
• Contributing to a study of retraction notice quality
• Taking part in programs to train other journalists in how to report on fraud and related issues
• Adding The Retraction Watch Weekly, a way to streamline your emails from us while supporting our work

Our work continues to be cited regularly in the scholarly literature as well as the popular press.

Thank you.

We close these birthday posts the same way every year: We always need more help. So we’re asking that you please consider a U.S. tax-deductible donation to support our work. You can make a one-time contribution by PayPal or by Square, or a monthly tax-deductible donation by Paypal. Or if you prefer to send a check, please make it out to The Center For Scientific Integrity and mail it to 121 W. 36th St., Suite 209, New York, NY 10018. Should you be in a position to donate securities, please contact [email protected] for instructions.

Thank you in advance, and thank you for your ongoing support.