Women Authors Are Less Likely Than Male Authors to Have Their Research Articles Retracted

Women authors are less likely to have their academic papers retracted than their male counterparts, according to a new study published in the Journal of Informetrics. 

Using a dataset of more than 11,000 retracted articles and over 19 million non-retracted articles from scientists around the world, the study authors investigated gender differences in the retraction rates of first authors and corresponding authors, including detailed information on the reason for retraction, field of study, and country.

Overall, male authors had higher retraction rates than women. While there was no gender difference in retractions attributed to mistakes, men were more likely to have their articles retracted because of plagiarism, authorship disputes, ethical issues, duplication, and fabrication or falsification. Among various fields of study, men had higher retraction rates in biomedical and health sciences, as well as life and earth sciences. Conversely, women had higher retraction rates in mathematics and computer science. In the United States, male authors had an overall higher retraction rate than their women colleagues.

Going forward, the authors call for future research to investigate the drivers of these gender disparities, potentially providing insight into how to reduce the overall prevalence of retractions in academia.

The study included authors from the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom, Zhejiang University in China, Renmin University of China, and Leiden University in the Netherlands.