Articles are retracted for many reasons- ranging from honest mistakes to intentional manipulation, but whatever the reason, retractions play a crucial role in maintaining the integrity of the scholarly record.
Retractions serve as a mechanism for self-corrections, ensuring that erroneous or fraudulent results or conclusions do not mislead the public, the academic community, or policy makers- creating an unsound foundation for future discoveries, policies, or behaviour.
In recent years, the number of retractions has been rising sharply. For example, in 2023, more than 10 000 research papers were retracted globally. This marked a new record.
Also, in the past decade, there have been more than 39,000 retractions, and the annual number of retractions is growing by around 23% each year, according to Retraction Watch.
In my readings recently, I chanced on an article on Myjoyonline by one Sulemana Issifu concerning, ” Academic Fraud Scandal Deepens: Ghanaian Universities Implicated in Global Journal Retraction Amid Rising Fake Credentials Crisis “, published on 31st July, 2025. I must commend the writer for that good piece of work.
I also chanced on a pdf document circulating and shared many times via WhatsApp platforms titled ” Academic of Global Proportion: GCTU’s Integrity Crisis which Painted Ghana as a hub of fraudulent Research and Damaged Trust in African Scholarship Globally” by an unknown publisher, which seemed to me as being mischievous and a deliberate attempt to tarnish the image of some highly respected academic personalities from Ghana Communication Technology University.
Despite all these, I have my reservations, which I think the retractions by Springer Nature were pulled down due to what they termed as “Serious Concerns,” but I bet to differ.
However, retractions aren’t punishments- they’re about transparency and integrity. They usually happen for one of the two reasons stated below:
Author-Initiated Retractions: Sometimes, researchers discover a significant error in their own published work and request retractions to correct the record.
Editorial Retractions: More often, a journal’s editorial board retracts an article due to violations of publishing policies. These can include honest mistakes such as errors in data analysis or methodology, or intentional misconduct.
Springer Nature retracted 2,923 papers in 2024. According to Alice Henchley, Director of Communications, integrity, ethics and editorial policy for Springer Nature Group in a press briefings said, the journal was cleaning up hundreds of papers for ” suspicious citations, tortured phrases and undisclosed use of AI in the journal’s articles “.
The question is: Did the journal do due diligence before the retractions after barely three years of publication?
In my investigations, according to some of the authors whose articles were retracted in Ghanaian Universities; They said;
“They wrote severally to the editor-in-chief who happens to be the same editor-in-chief when the paper was submitted for consideration for publication to explain these issues to the editor and the staff in charge of queries related to post-publication corrections and accepted manuscripts in production but to no avail. In fact, not a single email sent to the editor was replied.
Also, Authors did comprehensive checks on all cited papers before they were used. There were no issues related to the papers used by the authors as part of their references; hence, difficult to understand the issue of Inappropriate or Irrelevant References stated as part of the reasons for retraction by the journal as well as the unknown publisher alleging academic dishonesty.
Moreover, the Committee on Publishing Ethics (COPE) clearly outlines the roles to be played by all parties before a manuscript is published. These parties must collaborate to ensure that a manuscript is published without any issues. The question is, did the other parties perform their roles to ensure that the manuscript was of high quality? ”
Currently, the Clarivate impact factor of the Environmental Science and Pollution Research (ESPR) journal, which used to be 5.255 (2023), has been ceased, and the Springer Nature Journal has also been blacklisted from the Web of Science Core Collection of journals. This means that the journal, after its unreasonable retraction in 2024, has been punished severely for doing so.
In an event where authors’ scholarly works are retracted, it does not necessarily point towards Academic , unless it is proven beyond a reasonable doubt to be. If not proven properly, just as the ESPR journal did in 2024, anyone who termed it as academic fraud just may want to be mischievous in playing “dirty politics” around it, either to settle a score or just to tarnish the image of the authors.
After an extensive reading on the reasons stated for retraction, I can conclude that the authors may not be guilty of anything but clear negligence of the journalist’s own processes.
It can also be stated that the journal was just going on a massive retraction because over 1000 articles were retracted during the exercise. The journal was very unfair to all authors whose papers were retracted without a good cause, because some of the papers had been published for over 3 years.
The little I know with academic publications are that, manuscripts are first submitted to the editor-in-chief who have the right to even give it a desk-reject when the paper does not meet the standards or the scope of the journal, if it meets the scope, the editor-in-chief will then send to their own selected peer reviewers, peer reviewers also have the right to accept the paper, reject, or give comments for modification. When all is done, the editor-in-chief again sends it back to the authors with the reviewers’ comments to be factored into the paper before it can be accepted for the final stage of publication. Now the questions are as follows:
What process did the journal use before accepting the papers for publication? Were the comments from reviewers not sent to the authors by the editor-in-chief for corrections? Who defines the scope of the journal?, etc.
The above questions are multifaceted, and the ESPR journal may have to answer before anyone could cast a snare on the authors.
But no person or field, or institution is perfect. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone is fallible, and researchers are no different. The willingness of researchers and publishers to retract papers is taking ownership of issues and being transparent about them. And I think that’s a good thing.
In summary, I can say with no apology that Ghanaian scholars are still one of the best in the world and need to be encouraged because retractions are normal in academia, and it can be done by either party with or without reasonable reasons.
Researchers and authors are advised to open their eyes wide before choosing a journal for their publications. They should not just be drowned by their popular phrase, “Publish or Perish” to fall victim to such situations. Institutions must also minimise the pressures on faculty members with regard to publications in order to avoid such occurrences because publications are difficult, but are vital for every institution and the nation as a whole, so we need to preserve the integrity and public trust in academia.
By; Richmond Hagan Agyiri, Freelance Investigative Journalist
