Samira Boukorraa‡, Ridha Mhamdi§Corresponding author: Ridha Mhamdi ( ridha.mhamdi@cbbc.rnrt.tn ) Academic editor: Yasin Hasan Balcıoğlu © Samira Boukorraa, Ridha Mhamdi. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Citation:
Boukorraa S, Mhamdi R (2026) Retractions of academic papers in green economics: a case of green turning red. European Science Editing 52: e174219. https://doi.org/10.3897/ese.2025.e174219 |  |
Background: The integrity of scholarly literature is paramount, yet retracted research remains largely unexamined within the rapidly growing field of green economy.
Objectives: As the first systematic analysis of retracted research publications in the green economy, this study aims to (1) quantify the proportion of retractions and identify temporal and geographic patterns of retractions, (2) map the intellectual structure of the retracted literature, and (3) identify the primary causes and impacts of these retractions.
Methods: A corpus of 61,273 Scopus-indexed documents on the green economy was analyzed; of these, 181 retracted publications were systematically identified and examined. The analysis included quantitative assessment of the proportion of retractions and keyword co-occurrence using VOSviewer in addition to qualitative content analysis of retraction notices.
Results: The proportion of retractions (retraction rate) was 29.5 retractions for every 10,000 publications, significantly higher than that in many scientific disciplines. Two distinct crisis periods were identified, 2009–2011 and 2021–2024, involving different publication channels (conference proceedings and journals), with 86% of the retractions originating from China. The leading causes of the retractions were compromised peer review (78%) and referencing issues (66%), particularly affecting research in sustainability–industry linkages, energy transitions, and climate-related economic policy. Notably, 59% of the retractions came from in Q1/Q2 journals, and some of the retracted papers had been cited as many as 121–177 times.
Conclusion: The findings revealed critical systemic vulnerabilities in the scholarly ecosystem, including the exploitation of special issues and opaque retraction processes. The authors propose three evidence-based interventions to reinforce integrity: enhanced conference governance, AI-assisted validation of peer reviews, and adoption of standardized metadata on retractions.