Analysis of Retractions from Hospitals in Mainland China from 2017-2019

Objective: The aim of this study is to analyze the features of retractions from hospitals in mainland China, and to discuss the causes of research misconduct by Chinese doctors.Research Methods: PubMed, Web of Science, and Retraction Watch Database were searched to collect eligible records and to extract characteristics of the included entries, including publishers and Open Access status of the journals involved, ORCID, PubPeer comments before the retraction, whether there are authors from Grade A, Third-class hospitals, and whether there are response or requirements from authors.Results: 521 retractions were included. Retractions were found primarily from authors of grade A, third-class hospitals, a limited regions, and published in journals with medium and high impact factor. The main reasons for retractions were Data Manipulation/Fabrication/Fraud(27.1%), Error by Author(19.9%), Plagiarism(16.7%), Self-Plagiarism(9.1%), Fake Peer Review(7.6%) and Forged Authorship(6.3%). Most of the retracted publications have neither ORCID nor PubPeer comments before their retraction.Conclusion: This is the first report focus on the retractions from hospitals in mainland China. The large number of retractions from Chinese hospitals in recent years is worrying. The results suggests that some retractions are related to third-parties. Some features of retractions are centralized, and it is difficult to evaluate the role of ORCID and PubPeer in the retractions during this period.