Abstract
Background: To examine the errata and retractions in total published output of Hungarian research and academia relative to that in 34 other European countries. Objective: To analyse the number of errata and retractions related to papers published by authors with Hungarian affiliations compared to those by authors with affiliations in the 34 other countries. Methods: Errata and retractions retrieved from three databases, namely Retraction Watch, Web of Science (WoS), and Scopus, were counted and sorted by country. Results: Scopus featured 7 retractions linked to Hungarian affiliations and WoS featured 10. Retraction Watch featured 26 such retractions, placing Hungary in 23rd position among the 35 countries arranged in descending order of the number of retractions. Of the 26 retractions from Hungary, 5 were in Elsevier journals and another 5 in Springer Nature; also, 8 of the 26 were associated with the University of Debrecen. When ranked for the number of errata notices for every 1000 published papers, Hungary was ranked 29th in WoS (2.54 notices per 1000 papers) and 26th in Scopus (2.3 notices per 1000 papers). Conclusions: The low numbers of Hungarian affiliations suggest that either research ethics are more stringently observed in Hungary or that publications from Hungarian research institutes, including papers in Hungarian – many Hungarian journals are indexed neither in WoS nor in Scopus – have not been scrutinized adequately through post-publication peer review.
Highlights
The integrity of academic literature can be assessed through the prism of amendments to it, either as corrigenda or retractions, and when evaluated at the level of a country or region, such data can provide unique insights
The low numbers of Hungarian affiliations suggest that either research ethics are more stringently observed in Hungary or that publications from Hungarian research institutes, including papers in Hungarian – many Hungarian journals are indexed neither in Web of Science (WoS) nor in Scopus – have not been scrutinized adequately through post-publication peer review
To extract data from WoS, Hungary was specified as the country or region; with Scopus, Hungary was specified as the ‘affiliation country’
Summary
The integrity of academic literature can be assessed through the prism of amendments to it, either as corrigenda or retractions, and when evaluated at the level of a country or region, such data can provide unique insights. Corrections and retractions cannot be equated: whereas retractions are usually published in the wake of evidence of violation of publishing ethics, such as data fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism, or that of even more serious malpractices such as research misconduct, corrections are typically published to set the record straight when any errors come to light. Both are forms of amending scientific literature and monitoring research quality after publication, corrections, unlike retractions, are usually issued to correct mistakes and to remove any erroneous or misleading information.. To examine the errata and retractions in total published output of Hungarian research and academia relative to that in 34 other European countries
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