Retraction Watch
Retraction Watch maintains a database of retracted papers, corrections and expressions of concern. Since 2023 the database belongs to Crossref, which publishes it as open data and includes it in its metadata. ScholarMuse does not query Retraction Watch itself. It reads these notices from the Crossref REST API, so an agent can check DOIs or a whole reference list for retracted work.
ScholarMuse tools: check_retractions, verify_references. Each successful call uses credits.
The web tool runs without an account, up to 5 runs a day per visitor.
Ask your agent
What your agent gets back
Every record carries id, source, title, url, license, attribution and retrievedAt. The fields below are the data that comes from Retraction Watch.
check_retractions
One record per DOI. A notice whose source is retraction-watch comes from the Retraction Watch database; publisher means the publisher deposited it.
- doi
- The DOI that was checked
- status
- retracted, expression_of_concern, corrected, no_notice or not_found
- retracted
- Combined retraction verdict
- expressionOfConcern
- True when an expression of concern is attached
- corrected
- True when a correction is attached
- notices
- Each notice: kind, type, noticeDoi, date, source
- crossrefRetracted
- Retraction verdict from the Crossref record
- openalexRetracted
- OpenAlex's separate retraction flag
- notes
- Remarks, such as a flag with no linked notice
verify_references
Works without DOIs: each reference is matched by title first. The Retraction Watch notice is preferred over the publisher's when both exist.
- retracted
- True when the matched paper is retracted
- retraction
- The retraction notice: kind, type, noticeDoi, date, source
- status
- verified, corrected, not_found or uncertain
- matched
- Metadata of the paper the reference matched
- notes
- Includes a line with the retraction date and notice link
What it covers
- Retractions, withdrawals, corrections and expressions of concern attached to DOIs registered with Crossref.
- Each notice names its source, so Retraction Watch entries can be told apart from publisher deposits.
- A second, independent retraction flag from OpenAlex is checked alongside.
Limits
- check_retractions takes at most 100 DOIs per call and skips references that have no DOI.
- The reason for a retraction is not returned. You get the notice type, its DOI, the date and the source.
- Papers whose DOI is not registered with Crossref, such as DataCite or arXiv DOIs, have no notices here. Only the OpenAlex flag is checked for them.
- Retractions that appear only in the Retraction Watch CSV file and are not attached to a Crossref DOI record are not seen.
How ScholarMuse reaches Retraction Watch
There is no Retraction Watch connector. The tools request each work from api.crossref.org/works and read its updated-by field, where Crossref lists notices from publishers and from Retraction Watch, and update-to, which marks a DOI that is itself a notice. No API key is sent.
Crossref lookups by DOI are cached for up to 1 day, so a retraction recorded today can take a day to appear here.
API key: none to set up; the data comes through Crossref REST API.
Licence and attribution
Licence: Crossref metadata: facts, free to reuse (abstracts may be under publisher copyright)
Metadata from Crossref (crossref.org), including Retraction Watch data.
There is no separate Retraction Watch record: these are the licence and attribution of the Crossref records the notices are read from. When you cite the data in a paper, follow Retraction Watch's own citation guidance.
