Characteristics of retracted editorial articles in the biomedical literature

The main purpose of this short communication is to identify and analyze retracted editorials in the biomedical literature. Twenty-five of the 33 editorials are chosen for further analysis. All of the editorials were published as commentaries and concise reviews between 1998 and 2021. Due to plagiarism and data-related issues, the majority of the editorial articles were retracted. Alarmingly, one-fifth of the editorials were funded by external agencies, with the USA leading the list of retracted editorials. The average time between the publication of the editorials and their retraction is 2.48 years, and two editorials were retracted with the longest durations; both were written by the same author. The conclusion is that, at the very least, editorial articles should be devoid of research/scientific misconduct.