China frequently makes news for being at the forefront of peer-review scandals like this one and this one. And data appears to bear that out, showing China contributed well over half of the papers retracted for compromised peer review from 2012 to 2016, according to data obtained by Quartz.
This discussion piece highlights why China is cracking down on fraud in research. The graphic ‘Retracted papers for fake peer review by country from 2012 to 2016’ provides an interesting international comparison of the number of papers forcibly retracted due to fake peer review.
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Over the past five years, a total of 498 papers have been retracted over peer-review issues, according to the US blog Retraction Watch (papers can also be retracted for other reasons, but those papers aren’t included here). The blog used the nationalities of corresponding authors to reach its tally, since they are responsible for paper submissions. The breakdown by country below totals 502, reflecting papers counted twice because of corresponding authors with affiliations in multiple countries.
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Read the rest of this discussion piece
Also see ‘China cracks down on fake data in drug trials‘