Mathematical model of retractions: Facts, analysis and recommendations

The high rate of new retraction from di¤erent publishers nowadays is alarming. By reading reasons or retractions notes, one will conclude that there are fair and unfair retractions. To protect the integrity of research, the practice of fair retraction should be performed and authors should be responsible for their wrong doings. On the other hand, attention should be devoted to unfair retractions, especially retraction notes indicating that the authors did not agree with the retraction. The aim of this paper is to provide a discussion by presenting …rst the statistical analysis of retraction data from ten di¤erent publishers ranging between the year 2000 and 2020. Secondly, to provide a forecast up to 2050 and see which of the publishers will have more or less retractions. The aim of such prediction is a wakeup call to authors, reviewers, editors and publishers to be more mindful of what they are doing. Most importantly, publishers must put all mechanisms in place to avoid unfair retractions. A list of possible causes of high rates of unfair and fair retractions have been presented to help di¤erent actors to take actions. A mathematical model with a system of seven ordinary di¤erential equations depicting a possible scenario of retraction dynamic is constructed in this work. Di¤erent analyses were performed for deterministic and stochastic versions. Finally a discussion and recommendations were made to restore the dignity of those authors that have been victims of unfair retractions.