Image: wiredforlego [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Flickr
Researchers affiliated to institutions in Egypt retracted more articles than scientists from any other African country in the 21 months leading up to September 2018.
The data was presented by South African researchers from the University of Pretoria and the Human Sciences Research Council at the World Conference on Research Integrity in Hong Kong, China, on 2-5 June.
During the period of study, the researchers found 76 retracted papers with authors from 13 African countries in the Retraction Watch database used for the survey. Egyptian scientists were involved in the most papers (31 per cent), followed by South Africa (17 per cent), Tunisia (15.5 per cent), and Algeria (12.7 per cent).
The most common reasons for retraction were plagiarism (23 articles), article duplication (16), error in data, results or conclusions (15) and authorship disputes (8). Only three articles had falsified research results or data. Three-quarters, or 77.2 per cent, of the manuscripts included senior academics.
Overall, proportionally more female than male lead authors had articles retracted for plagiarism in the African sample.
The findings will be followed up with a study looking at retracted papers from Africa over a period of five years, the researchers say. Those results will point to areas where training and focused support might benefit authors in various African countries.
Although African attendance was limited at the conference, a handful of researchers presented data and insights from the continent. In a Kenyan survey of 100 HIV researchers carried out by scientists at Moi University, over one-third said they had personally been involved in research involving fabrication, falsification or plagiarism.
And a survey of 100 biomedical journals indexed on the African Journals Online database carried out by researchers in South Africa and the United Kingdom found that many lacked explicit guidelines on authorship, how to manage conflicts of interests and disclosure of funding sources. Where journals had such guidelines, they were poorly implemented.
The next World Conference on Research Integrity will take place in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2021.