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Exclusive: These universities have the most retracted scientific articles

A first-of-its-kind analysis by Nature reveals which institutions are retraction hotspots.
By
  1. Richard Van Noorden
Cartoon showing three paper cutouts of university buildings passing through a shredder with shredded ribbons appearing underneath..

Illustration: Sébastien Thibault

Two days before the end of 2021, administrators at Jining First People’s Hospital in Shandong, China, issued a highly unusual report. The hospital announced that it had disciplined some 35 researchers who had been linked to fraud in publications, such as fabricating data. These sanctions were part of a countrywide crackdown motivated by concerns about a flood of sham medical papers emanating from hospitals.

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Nature 638, 596-599 (2025)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-00455-y

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 27 February 2025: An earlier version of the main text of this News feature named the wrong Ethiopian university in the examples of institutions that are high up on several leader boards.

References

  1. Schneider, J., Lee, J., Zheng, H. & Oyewale Salami, M. in Proc. 27th Int. Conf. Sci. Technol. Innov. Indic. https://doi.org/10.55835/6441e5cae04dbe5586d06a5f (2023).

  2. Xu, S. B. & Hu, G. Nature Hum. Behav. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-02099-w (2025).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Agrawal, A. Preprint at Zenodo https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14634333 (2025).

  4. Heathers, J. Preprint at OSF https://doi.org/10.17605/osf.io/5rf2m (2024).

  5. Porter, S. J. & McIntosh, L. D. Preprint at arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2401.04022 (2024).

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Supplementary Information

  1. Methodology

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