Construction and management of retraction stigma in retraction notices: an authorship-based investigation

Although retraction is widely perceived as stigmatic in the scientific community, little is known about how retraction stigma is communicated via retraction notices. Drawing on a dataset of 1,000 retraction notices, this study investigated what communication strategies were employed in retraction notices to construct and manage retraction stigma and whether retraction notices penned by journal authorities and authors of retracted publications differed in the use of those strategies. A content analysis of the retraction notices identified three types of retraction stigma construction strategy (i.e., creating marks, assigning responsibility, and exposing perils) and four types of retraction stigma management strategy (i.e., concealing stigma visibility, refraining from labelling, manipulating responsibility assignment, and offering correction and remediation). Authorship-based differences were found in the deployment of all seven types of stigma construction and management strategy and 17 individual strategies. The use of two types of construction strategy were significantly associated with the use of three types of management strategy. These findings revealed retraction notices as capable of both stigmatizing and destigmatizing. Thus, retraction notices constitute a discourse genre that is imbued with communicative tensions rooted in the diverse functions that they can serve.