Fig. 3: Analysing collaborator retention, gain and triadic closure among retracted authors who stayed in scientific publishing post-retraction.

a–c, The difference between the numbers of collaborators retained (a), the numbers of collaborators gained (b) and the proportions of triads closed 5 years post-retraction (c) for the authors (N = 2,348) who were retracted (red circles) and their matched non-retracted pairs (green squares). These are further stratified by gender, year of retraction, academic age, author order, reason of retraction, type of retraction and discipline. Data are presented as mean values. The solid line represents a statistically significant difference using a two-sided Welch’s t-test (assuming unequal variances). Supplementary Tables 6–8 present the 95% confidence intervals and the results from additional non-parametric tests.