What Is Retraction?
A retraction is a journal's formal withdrawal of a published paper because its findings are unreliable - broken data, fatal errors or misconduct. The notice stays linked to the paper permanently, and citing a retracted study as evidence is one of the fastest ways to lose a grader's trust. This page unpacks the definition, the mistakes graders see most, and a worked example you can pattern-match against your own draft.
James Parker, MLS
Citation & Formatting Reviewer · Master of Library Science; 9 years as a reference librarian coaching APA, MLA and Chicago styles
Quick answer
A retraction is a journal's formal withdrawal of a published paper because its findings are unreliable - broken data, fatal errors or misconduct. The notice stays linked to the paper permanently, and citing a retracted study as evidence is one of the fastest ways to lose a grader's trust.
On this page · 4 sections
The definition, precisely
A retraction is the formal withdrawal of a published paper, issued by the journal or its publisher when the findings can no longer be trusted - data that fails verification, analyses that do not hold, duplicate publication, plagiarism, or outright fabrication. The paper is not deleted; it stays online marked RETRACTED, usually watermarked, with a notice explaining who retracted it and why, and that notice is linked from the article page permanently. For citation purposes the paper is dead: whatever it once contributed to the literature is withdrawn, and every database that indexes the journal flags it - PubMed, Scopus and the Retraction Watch database all track the mark.
Papers are retracted for the full span of human error: honest mistakes - a coding bug, a mislabeled sample - sit at one end, image manipulation and fabricated data at the other, and famous cases like the Wakefield autism paper show how long a retracted study can keep causing damage after withdrawal. For students the exposure is narrow but real: a citation pulled from a years-old reading list may have been retracted since, PDFs circulate without their notices, and preprint copies carry no watermark at all. A grader who recognizes a retracted citation will not just dock the source - the whole bibliography's vetting comes into question.
The habit is cheap: verify before you rely. Check the publisher's article page for a retraction notice, and for anything load-bearing run the title through the Retraction Watch database or PubMed, which flags retracted publications directly in results. If a study you cited turns out to be retracted, replace it - find the corrected republication, the replication, or an independent line of evidence. The one legitimate use is discussing the retraction itself: citing the Wakefield paper as a retracted study that fueled vaccine misinformation is sound scholarship, provided the citation names the retraction. Never cite it quietly as if the science still stood.
The four mistakes graders see most
Every one of these shows up in a stack of sixty papers — usually more than once. Each pairs the error with the fix, so the table doubles as a pre-submission check.
| Common mistake | The fix |
|---|---|
| Citing a PDF saved last semester without checking its status. | Retractions happen after the download. Check the publisher's article page for a notice before the paper is due - the check takes seconds and catches the watermark a bare PDF hides. |
| Citing the preprint version of a paper that was later retracted. | Preprints carry no retraction watermarks. Verify the published version's status, and if the work was withdrawn, replace it rather than relabeling the preprint. |
| Treating a correction notice as a retraction. | A correction or erratum fixes an error while the paper stands; a retraction withdraws the paper itself. Read the notice's wording, and cite the corrected version where one exists. |
| Keeping a retracted citation 'just for background'. | There is no decorative tier for unreliable evidence. If the claim matters, it needs a citable source; if the source is dead, the claim needs a new one. |
A worked example
A public health student building a paper on vaccine hesitancy finds a 2019 nutrition study through a Google Scholar search and saves the PDF. Before citing, she opens the publisher's page and finds a retraction notice citing duplicated image data. She searches the Retraction Watch database to confirm, then locates a 2022 replication from a different lab that supports the same direction of finding, and cites that instead - with a footnote naming the retracted study as the reason the replication mattered. Her grader, who knew the field's history, registers that the bibliography was vetted, not just collected.
Pattern-match your own draft against this example rather than against the definition: concrete cases transfer better than abstract rules, and the example shows what the rule looks like when it is done right.
How retraction differs from its neighbors
A retraction is not the mark of a predatory journal, though both end in distrust: predatory journals publish unvetted work under a scholarly costume, while a retraction is the system policing itself - the paper was legitimate enough to publish, then withdrawn when it failed. It is not a correction either: corrections amend an error and leave the paper standing, retractions remove the paper's evidential standing entirely. And it is not mere outdatedness - an old study can remain valid, while a retracted one is invalid at any age. Published, corrected, retracted: three states, and only the middle one is still evidence.
Boundary confusion is where most grading deductions live: the term is understood roughly but applied against the wrong neighbor. Pin the boundary above and the term stops being fuzzy in practice, which is what the rubric is actually testing.
What's your next step?
Two taps to the exact page that unblocks this paper.
The 30-second check
Skim the four mistakes above against your draft. Any hit is a fix you can make in minutes — and the format row of the rubric is where they all live.
Run it through the tool
The free source credibility checker handles the mechanical half of this term — check it before you submit.
Open the toolRelated term: Peer Review — the neighbor this term is most often confused with. Reading the pair together is how the boundary sticks.
Frequently asked questions
4 answered1How do I check whether a paper has been retracted?
Open the publisher's article page and look for a retraction notice or watermark, then run the title through the Retraction Watch database. PubMed flags retracted publications in its results, and many databases attach status labels. For anything load-bearing, the thirty-second double-check is non-negotiable - downloaded PDFs and preprints never show the mark on their own.
2Can I cite a retracted paper at all?
Only as an object of discussion, never as evidence. Writing 'the retracted Wakefield study claimed a link, and its retraction for misconduct fueled further distrust' is legitimate history of science; quietly citing the study for its findings is not. The citation itself must name the retraction so no reader mistakes the paper for standing evidence.
3Why do papers get retracted?
Two families of cause: misconduct - fabricated or manipulated data, plagiarism, duplicate publication - and honest error, where a coding flaw or mislabeled sample invalidates the findings. Both families produce the same citation consequence: the paper stops being evidence. The notice usually states which it was, and the distinction matters for how you describe the case.
4What if my whole argument leaned on a retracted study?
Rebuild on independent lines rather than patching: look for the corrected republication, the replication, or a meta-analysis covering the question. This is exactly the scenario source triangulation exists to prevent - claims standing on three independent legs survive one leg failing. An argument that cannot survive its own source being withdrawn was never safe.
James Parker, MLS
Citation & Formatting Reviewer · Master of Library Science; 9 years as a reference librarian coaching APA, MLA and Chicago styles