Reality of Misconduct in Iranian Orthopedic Publications

n a newly published article in Science Journal 2018, the
situation of Iran in misconduct and retracted articles
was the worst and the rate of retracted papers was
higher than that in other countries (1). This resulted in
more attention toward Iranian published papers. There
was a low rate of retraction in the medical literature;
however, there has been a recent increase in retractions
so far (2). Fake research papers and scientific misconduct
are misleading the researchers; in addition, they can
impose a huge cost on the academic centers and health
systems (2). Finally, invalid published research may
give rise to incorrect treatment guidelines that may
harm the patients. Moreover, the number of published
scientific articles is increasing due to the developments
of societies and advancements in technology (2).
Accordingly, research-involved authorities decided
to revise and establish stricter policies for ethics and
publication condition. Proper workshops are held for
authors and researchers about the ethics of publication
in Iranian academic centers (3). Recently, the retraction
watch database website (http://retractiondatabase.org/
RetractionSearch.aspx) facilitates the search and review
of retracted articles with more details. For this reason,
conditions are provided for orthopedic specialists to
review the status of orthopedic studies. In total,10 Iranian
orthopedic studies were found retracted based on our
search in the retraction watch database. Regarding this
database, the numbers of all the papers which identified
retracted were 569 and 54 in Iran and other countries,
respectively. The published orthopedic articles from Iran
included 18.5% of the total orthopedic papersworldwide
which include 1.7% of the Iranian retracted studies. The
low rate of retractions in orthopedics is a great pleasure
but unfortunately, the most important reasons behind
retraction were fake peer-reviews, plagiarism, and
duplicate publications.
Yan et al. considered the main reasons for the
orthopedic retractions as fraudulent data and plagiarism