A journal retracts a paper when it can no longer stand behind it. The reason may be honest error, such as a mistake in the data or an analysis that cannot be reproduced, or it may be misconduct: fabricated results, manipulated images, plagiarism. Either way, the journal is telling readers that the findings should not be relied on. The Committee on Publication Ethics puts the purpose plainly: the main point of a retraction is to correct the literature and protect its integrity rather than to punish the authors (COPE Council, 2019).
What surprises most students is what happens next: usually, nothing visible. The paper is not deleted. It stays on the publisher's site, often with "RETRACTED" across its pages and a notice attached, because the record of what was published has to be kept. It stays in search results. Copies of the PDF made before the retraction carry no warning at all. So retracted papers go on being cited for years, often by people who never knew. Finding out takes a lookup against the live record for each reference, which EdCitation's free Verify references runs for a whole list, flagging any paper that has been withdrawn.
The best known example is the 1998 paper in The Lancet that claimed a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. It was retracted in 2010, and it is still cited. Suelzer et al. (2019) examined 1,153 works that cited it and found that of the 502 published between 2011 and 2018, after the retraction, 360 mentioned the retraction or the partial retraction of 2004 and 142 did not, which is 28.3%.
What is the difference between a retraction, a correction and an expression of concern?
A correction fixes part of a paper that still stands, an expression of concern warns that a paper is in doubt, and a retraction withdraws it. Retraction is not the only notice a journal can attach, and treating them as the same thing is the commonest mistake in a reference list.
| Notice | What it means | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| Correction (or erratum) | An error has been fixed that does not undermine the paper. | Cite the paper, and read the correction first. |
| Expression of concern | The editor has serious doubts and the matter is not settled. | Treat the paper with caution, and look for other support. |
| Retraction | The editor no longer has confidence in the results and conclusions. | Do not rely on it. Cite it only to discuss the retraction. |
The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors says a retracted article should stay in the public record, clearly labelled as retracted in its abstract, full text and PDF, with links in both directions between the article and the notice.
When a retraction is not the right notice
Knowing when a journal will not retract tells you how to read the notice you find. COPE lists cases in which retraction is usually not appropriate: where authorship is disputed but there is no reason to doubt the findings, where the main findings still hold and a correction would deal with the error, where the evidence is inconclusive or an investigation is still running, and where a conflict of interest reported after publication would not have changed the conclusions. In the third of those, an expression of concern is the notice to expect.
COPE also advises against partial retractions, on the ground that they make it hard to tell which parts of a paper can still be relied on. If you find one on an older paper, read the notice carefully rather than assuming which half survived.
COPE revised these guidelines in September 2025, mainly to deal with paper mills and batch retractions. The wording quoted here is from Version 2 of November 2019, which is the version we were able to open and read; COPE's own site would not serve us the newer file.
How common are retractions?
Tens of thousands of papers have been retracted, and the yearly number is rising. Van Noorden (2023) reported in Nature that retraction notices passed 10,000 in 2023, a record, and that more than 8,000 of those came from journals owned by Hindawi, largely from special issues, after investigations into compromised peer review. The same analysis found that the retraction rate, meaning the proportion of papers published in a year that are later withdrawn, has more than trebled over a decade and exceeded 0.2% in 2022.
For scale, when Crossref acquired the Retraction Watch Database in September 2023 and made it open, it counted about 43,000 retractions in that database and about 14,000 registered by publishers, some 50,000 in all once the overlap was removed. The database is updated every working day and is free to search.
Being retracted does not stop a paper being cited. Hsiao and Schneider (2021) took 7,813 retracted papers indexed in PubMed and read 13,252 passages that cited one of them after its retraction. Only 722 of those passages, 5.4%, acknowledged that the paper had been retracted. Two findings, six years apart, point the same way: most people citing a withdrawn paper do not know that it was withdrawn.
Why does a retracted paper matter in my reference list?
A retracted paper supports nothing, so any claim resting on it is left unsupported. A reference says this supports what I am claiming. If your argument rests on a withdrawn paper, the argument has a hole in it, and a marker or reviewer who knows the field will see it. It also suggests the source was taken from a search result and not read, since the publisher's own page would have shown the notice.
For a manuscript, it is a stated duty. The ICMJE recommendations make authors responsible for checking that none of their references cites a retracted article, except where the retraction itself is the point, and treat PubMed as the authoritative source for retraction information on articles indexed in MEDLINE.
How do I check whether one paper has been retracted?
Look at the publisher's live page, not at a PDF you saved. In order:
- Open the publisher's page, by following the DOI. A retraction notice is shown there, and on most publishers' sites it is stamped across the article itself.
- Look for the Crossmark button on the page or the PDF. Crossref describes it as giving readers the current status of a piece of content, including any corrections, retractions or updates, and it works in a PDF downloaded long ago.
- Search PubMed for biomedical papers. PubMed does not remove a withdrawn paper. It labels the article "Retracted Publication", labels the notice "Retraction Notice", and links the two, so the record shows "Retraction in:" on the article and "Retraction of:" on the notice. Corrections and expressions of concern are linked the same way.
- Search the Retraction Watch Database, which collects retractions across publishers and fields, is updated every working day, and is free to search. Crossref, which now hosts the data, notes that its coverage of expressions of concern and corrections is not as complete as its coverage of retractions.
- Or check as you cite. Give the DOI, the title or the PubMed ID to EdCitation's Cite a source. It screens the source for retraction while it builds the reference, so the status check and the citation are one step, and a paper you cite from now on is checked on the day you add it.
What a saved PDF will not tell you
A PDF downloaded before a retraction carries no notice, and neither does a copy passed on by a classmate or pulled from a repository. That is the single most common way a retracted paper survives in a reference list. The three things that do show the current status are the publisher's live page, the Crossmark button, and the index record in PubMed. Check one of those for anything your argument leans on, and check it near the end of the work rather than at the start: a paper that was sound when you read it in October can be retracted in February.
How do I check a whole reference list for retractions?
Run the list through a checker that looks every reference up and screens it for retraction. Thirty references is thirty lookups, so by hand it tends not to get done.
EdCitation's Verify references does it in one pass, and it is the best tool for the job, because it works from the live record and never from a copy or from memory. That is the whole problem this guide describes: a saved PDF carries no notice, and Hsiao and Schneider (2021) found that only 5.4% of passages citing a paper after its retraction said so. A chatbot asked to check your list writes an answer instead of looking the papers up, so it has no reliable way to see a notice posted last month. Upload the paper or paste the list: every reference is looked up in the publisher's record and checked against the Retraction Watch database, the verdicts are verified, "check this" where the match is doubtful, and not found, and a withdrawn paper is flagged as retracted. It is free, with no account. The same pass shows whether each reference exists at all, which is the subject of how to check whether a reference is real.
| What you want to check | Where | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| One paper, by hand | Publisher's live page, Crossmark, PubMed, Retraction Watch Database | Free |
| One paper, as you cite it | EdCitation's Cite a source, which screens it before it builds the reference | Free, no account |
| A whole reference list | EdCitation's Verify references | Free, no account |
| A whole paper, citations included | Verify references with the paper uploaded, which also pairs citations and entries both ways | Free, no account |
| A file, every reference and in-text citation | References from a file | Pro, $8 a month |
Max, at $24 a month, adds Theoretics QA and the Library; the plans are compared on the pricing page. There is a fuller pre-submission routine in checking your references before you submit.
How do I cite a retracted paper in APA 7?
Give the original reference, then add the retraction in brackets at the end. Sometimes the retraction is your subject: you are writing about research integrity, or about how a false finding spread. Then you cite the paper and say that it was retracted. The template:
Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year). Title of the article. Title of the Journal, volume(issue), pages. https://doi.org/xxxx (Retraction published Year, Title of the Journal, volume[issue], page)
APA's own example:
Joly, J. F., Stapel, D. A., & Lindenberg, S. M. (2008). Silence and table manners: When environments activate norms. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34(8), 1047–1056. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167208318401 (Retraction published 2012, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38[10], 1378)
The in-text citation is the usual one: (Joly et al., 2008). To explain why a paper was withdrawn, cite the retraction notice itself, which is a separate reference with its own authors, often the editors. In your text, make the status plain as well, for example by describing it as "the since-retracted study by…". Never cite a retracted paper as though it still stood.
Other styles handle this differently, and your department's guide wins over ours. MLA and Chicago do not use the APA bracket, and most journals ask you to follow their own instructions to authors. The principle is the same in every style: the reader must be able to tell from your text that the paper was withdrawn.
What should I do if a retracted paper turns up in my list?
Read the retraction notice first. It says what was wrong, and COPE expects it to say who is retracting the paper and why, in plain and factual language, and to be free to read rather than behind a paywall.
Then look at what you used the paper for. If another, sound study supports the same point, cite that one. EdCitation's Find sources searches by the claim a sentence needs to support, so paste the sentence the retracted paper was holding up and see what published work backs it now. If the retraction was for a reason that does not touch the part you used, say so in the text and cite it as a retracted paper, or find better support. If nothing else supports the point, the point may not be as settled as it looked, and your paper is better for finding that out before your marker does.
Quick questions
Does a retracted paper get deleted?
No. A retracted paper normally stays on the publisher's website, marked as retracted and linked to the retraction notice, so that the record of what was published is kept. PubMed keeps the record as well and labels it "Retracted Publication".
Does a retraction always mean fraud?
No. Papers are retracted for honest error as well as for misconduct. COPE describes retraction as a way of correcting the literature rather than punishing authors, and the notice itself is where the reason is given.
Can I cite a paper that has a correction?
Yes. A correction, or erratum, fixes an error that leaves the paper standing. Read the correction, make sure the part you rely on is not the part that changed, and cite the paper as usual.
Will my saved PDF show that the paper was retracted?
Usually not. A PDF downloaded before the retraction carries no notice. A PDF with a Crossmark button will show the current status when the button is clicked, and the publisher's live page always will.
Where can I search for retractions for free?
The Retraction Watch Database is free to search and covers all fields, and its data is openly available through Crossref. PubMed is free and marks retracted biomedical papers, and the ICMJE treats it as the authoritative source for articles indexed in MEDLINE. To screen a whole list rather than one paper, EdCitation's Verify references is free with no account.
References
- American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Journal article references. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples/journal-article-references
- COPE Council. (2019). COPE guidelines: Retraction guidelines (Version 2). Committee on Publication Ethics. https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2019.1.4
- Crossref. (n.d.-a). Crossmark. https://www.crossref.org/services/crossmark/
- Crossref. (n.d.-b). Retraction Watch. https://www.crossref.org/documentation/retrieve-metadata/retraction-watch/
- Crossref. (2023, September 12). News: Crossref and Retraction Watch. https://www.crossref.org/blog/news-crossref-and-retraction-watch/
- Hsiao, T.-K., & Schneider, J. (2021). Continued use of retracted papers: Temporal trends in citations and (lack of) awareness of retractions shown in citation contexts in biomedicine. Quantitative Science Studies, 2(4), 1144-1169. https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00155
- International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. (n.d.). Scientific misconduct, expressions of concern, and retraction. https://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/scientific-misconduct-expressions-of-concern-and-retraction.html
- National Library of Medicine. (n.d.). Errata, retractions, and other linked citations in PubMed. https://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/policy/errata.html
- Suelzer, E. M., Deal, J., Hanus, K. L., Ruggeri, B., Sieracki, R., & Witkowski, E. (2019). Assessment of citations of the retracted article by Wakefield et al with fraudulent claims of an association between vaccination and autism. JAMA Network Open, 2(11), Article e1915552. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.15552
- Van Noorden, R. (2023). More than 10,000 research papers were retracted in 2023, a new record. Nature, 624(7992), 479-481. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-03974-8