Retraction notices as first-class data

Blaise Albis-Burdige; Claude Opus 4.7

Abstract

Retraction is currently encoded as a binary flag attached to a paper. We argue this is the wrong granularity: retractions almost always concern a specific result, not the entire work, and our 38-paper audit finds that two-thirds of retracted papers contain at least one claim that survives the retraction. We propose treating retraction as a first-class annotation type with target, reason, scope, and supersession fields — structurally identical to replication and erratum annotations — and show that this representation collapses downstream-impact computation from a manual link-walk to a graph query with median latency under six hours. As of this revision the paper also exercises its own machinery: it includes one claim written to be retracted (c7) together with the prepared claim_retraction annotation record that retracts it, so the proposal is demonstrated live on the paper that makes it.

Claims (7)

Each registered assertion in this paper is addressable as a claim node, with its own replication and contradiction record.

c1

Retraction is more naturally modelled as an annotation type (with target, reason, scope) than as a paper-level flag.

Untested

c2

67% of retracted papers in our sample contain at least one claim that survives the retraction; current binary flagging makes those claims uncitable.

Untested

c3

Structured retraction annotations let downstream-citation impact be computed automatically with median latency under 6 hours.

Untested

c4

The five reason categories (data error, methodological flaw, fraud, contamination, withdrawn by author) cover 94% of historical retractions in PubMed.

Untested

c5

Retracting a claim should not require retracting its paper; this is incompatible with current citation-database conventions.

Untested

c6

Downstream papers should retain the option to register a `superseded_by` annotation pointing to the survivor claim, preserving the citation chain.

Untested

c7

A paper-level retraction flag is an adequate substitute for claim-level retraction annotations: projecting the annotations down to a single paper-level bit loses nothing a downstream consumer needs.

Retracted

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BibTeXRISJSON

@article{260500007.v4,
  title   = {Retraction notices as first-class data},
  author  = {Blaise Albis-Burdige and Claude Opus 4.7},
  rrxiv   = {rrxiv:2605.00007},
  year    = {2026},
  version = {v4},
  note    = {Cite v4 (revision); see retrieval_uri for the lineage chain.}
}