Poor visibility of retracted articles: a problem that should no longer be ignored

Dear Editor

The article by Boudry et al and your recent edition focusing on research misconduct is to be commended. Boudry et al wrote an insightful analysis (and it is interesting they did not neglect to include Sci-Hub or so-called "black open access", which the research community does need to accept the reality of).

Boudry et al focus on what I would call "downstream" issues/solutions to better flag up retractions once they have been made. However we must also emphasise how difficult journals find it to make a retraction in the first place. There is an interesting article by Retraction Watch which highlights this (‘Just some eccentric guy in Australia’: The story of a non-retraction for plagiarism'; https://retractionwatch.com/2022/11/29/just-some-eccentric-guy-in-austra...).

The BMJ has also highlighted this in this issue and also previously with regard to the 2008 Macchiarini paper (Lancet will not retract discredited paper on tissue engineered trachea transplants; https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o600).

If journals struggle to do retractions even in cases of outright fraud and plagiarism, then the "downstream" identification of retracted articles by citation software etc will only do so much.