Examining retraction counts to evaluate journal quality in psychology.

Retraction is the process of removing an article from the scientific records after it has been published. The objective of the study is to explore the influence of the number of retracted papers on the journal quality parameters in the subject of Psychology. The study has applied Pearson Coefficient Correlation to establish the relationship between the number of retracted papers and bibliometric parameters of journal evaluation. All the retracted journal articles indexed in the Scopus database up to the year 2022 in the subject of Psychology, were considered for the study. The Software tools, i.e. MS Excel, and statistical software R Studio® (version 3.6.1) along with the Biblioshiny bibliometrics package were used for data analysis. Bibliometrics indicators, i.e. SJR, total citations count, and h index of the journals, were retrieved from the website of Scimago Journal Ranking (www.scimagojr.com), and the Journal Impact Factor (IF) 2022 was used for the analysis. The results revealed a set of 180 journal articles scattered across 99 journals, that were retracted in the subject of Psychology. Among these 36% of the retracted papers were published as open access. From the analysis, it was concluded that there is a positive correlation between the number of retracted papers and bibliometric indicators i.e., impact factor, h-index, total citation counts, and JCR. On the other hand, there is the least influence of the number of retracted articles with SJR (0.024) and IF (0.072). However, a visible and normal co-relation was found among the total citation counts (0.170) and h-index (0.136), respectively. The findings of the study revealed that there is the least correlation between the number of retracted journal articles and the journal evaluation indicators; therefore, journal publishers must include a retraction policy to enhance the journal's reputation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]