The good ol' “publish or perish” is there and it can be debated. But it is not going anywhere.

At the same time, peer-review is far from flawless. Evidently, some serious problems are not detected until after an article is published. These can include fabricated or manipulated data, altered or fake images, plagiarism, misleading statistical analyses, undisclosed conflicts of interest, or questionable authorship practices.

When such issues come to light, journals may retract the article. In my view, a retraction is worse than not publishing at all. If not publishing leaves you at zero; a retraction puts you in negative territory, publicly and permanently affecting credibility and trust.

I recently came across an interesting retraction case in which a paper was originally submitted with two authors, but eleven additional co-authors were added during the peer-review process, ultimately violating not only journal's policy, but also raising questions of integrity and ethnical publishing. The retraction notice does not explicitly accuse the authors of misconduct, but the case highlights a known problem in academia: authorship being gifted, traded, or even sold. Selling and buying authorship, unfortunately, is a well-known malpractice.

The broader lesson is clear: publication alone is not enough. Ethical research practices, transparency, and responsible authorship matter just as much as getting a paper accepted.

Retraction link:https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0981942824003279