Retracted publications in BRICS countries: an analytical study

This paper presents the extent of retractions in scientific publications of BRICS countries indexed in the SCOPUS database from 1989 to 2021. The scientific publication of BRICS countries has increased in recent years, which has given way to an increase in retraction. However, much money is being invested in research and development work resulting in more publications by BRICS than any other developing country. Out of 11,764 retracted publications, 72.67% of papers are written by two–five authors, in that 230 retracted articles are published by top 20 authors, it sums up to 1.99%. Retraction on conference proceedings share is 77.90% in that IEEE Computing Society retracts 99.04% of papers. Springer publisher retracts 29.69% journal articles. In the source of journal publication the Arabian Journal of Geosciences has 6.19% retractions. Out of 689 retraced citations, 40.64% are post-citations, and 59.36% are pre-citations. Three articles noticed self-citations in pre-retracted publications but no self-citations in the top 10 post-retracted articles. Unless the academic and research communities enforce severe action to address the growing problems of fabrication and plagiarism, research will be futile. More retraction would result in the degradation of the authors as well as the institution; both have to join hands and follow the publication ethics to stop or at least avoid retraction in the future.