China ‘spends $7 million’ on research for retracted papers

A new paper has explored the wider impact of paper retractions within China’s research system, revealing a substantial waste of public funding.

China’s retraction rate is above the global average and China-affiliated authors account for the largest share of research retractions.

Two research integrity scholars at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Shaoxiong Brian Xu and Guangwei Hu, analysed funding charges and article processing charges (APCs) at 82 retracted publications at potential predatory journals (PPJs) that had received funding from mainland China.

The researchers characterised PPJs as publications driven by “profit maximisation” with “little to no publication quality control”.

The authors estimated that $250,000 (£189,000) had been spent on APCs before the 82 papers were retracted. This equates to an average of $3,003 per publication.

To estimate the cost of the problem at a larger scale, the researchers applied the same average APC to the 2,248 retracted open access publications funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China between 2011 and 2025, estimating that wasted research funding cost $6.75 million.

The authors said that $6.75 million could be an underestimate, arguing "the true scale of this wasted research funding is likely much greater" when "costs for research materials, equipment and personnel" are taken into account.

The authors also identified duplicated content, erroneous content and plagiarism as the top three reasons for PPJ retractions. Their paper is published in the journal Learned Publishing.

Lead author Xu that the retracted publications represented a “triple failure”: “A breach of research integrity, the use of illegitimate publishing venues, and the waste of scarce research funding.”

By framing paper retractions in monetary terms, Xu said the researchered hoped to make issues central to research integrity in China more relevant to the sector at large.

“It’s closely related to money…how much money has been wasted on this kind of bad science.

“China is now the biggest national contributor to global rejections. China has the most serious retraction problem, which makes this research important and interesting.”

While emphasising the need for further research on funding wasted in paper retractions, the authors outlined three key recommendations.

The researchers said that grant recipients whose funded publications are retracted for “author-attributable reasons” should be required to pay back the initial APCs.

They also argued that researchers with retracted publications should be sanctioned for a defined period. This would include temporarily barring them from submitting grant applications or putting themselves forward for promotions or awards.

Finally, the authors have said that China should strengthen its safeguards for researchers by improving “its warning system” of predatory journals. They said that the Early Warning Journal List “provides insufficient journal coverage” and should be expanded.

rosalind.skillen@timeshighereducation.com