Retraction handling by potential predatory journals

Abstract

Retraction, as a post-publication quality control measure increasingly adopted by mainstream journals, has been observed in a few potential predatory journals (PPJs), but the extent and handling of retractions by PPJs in general remain unclear. This study investigated retraction practices among the 1,511 standalone PPJs on the updated Beall’s List. Data from the Retraction Watch Database revealed that only 46 of the PPJs, including 18 indexed by the Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection, had retracted a total of 645 publications as of 2022. The retraction handling performance of these PPJs was evaluated in terms of publicity of retraction policies, availability of retraction documents, visibility of retractions, and informativeness of retraction notices. Overall, the retracting PPJs performed poorly against these criteria and showed a trend of inadequate documentation of retraction policies and documents over time. A positive correlation was found between WoS inclusion and retraction handling performance of the PPJs except for the publicity of retraction policies. These findings suggest that retraction handling performance could serve as an additional important criterion of journal editorial practices and highlight the desirability of evaluating journal legitimacy in terms of post-publication quality control through retraction.