# Analysis audit and validation report

**Article:** *Diagnosing event dependence in computer-generated-content retraction metadata, 2010–2025*  
**Audit date:** 2026-07-22  
**Source file:** `retraction_watch.csv`  
**Source SHA-256:** `b790b8e3faf43488c9b0912bfa5e266269f8d7f4069615b087ff062820d69468`

## Population

- Raw records: 70,016.
- Non-retraction updates excluded: 5,209.
- Retractions before date-window filtering: 64,807.
- Primary 2010–2025 population: 60,893.
- Unique `Record ID` values: 60,893; duplicates: 0.
- CGC-tagged retractions: 9,102.
- Valid-looking original-paper DOI entries: 55,337; unique case-normalized values: 55,179.
- Non-empty DOI sentinels such as `Unavailable` are treated as missing.

The primary unit is a Retraction Watch record, not a deduplicated article or a claim about article-level AI use.

## Metadata-date correction

The reason token `Date of Article and/or Notice Unknown` identifies records for which the article and/or notice lacks a clear date. Those records retain their database year for the annual population but are excluded from date-concentration numerators and known-date denominators.

- CGC-tagged records carrying the flag: 114.
- Flagged CGC records assigned to 2021: 104 of 481.
- The apparent 2021 `2021-01-01` peak is therefore not treated as an event.
- Corrected two-leading-date result for 2021: 95/377 (25.20%) among known-date records, or 95/481 (19.75%) against all tagged records.

Both denominators are exported. The manuscript uses the conservative all-tagged denominator in comparative tables.

## Publisher-lineage audit

`publisher-lineage-crosswalk.csv` exposes every raw publisher/year/DOI-evidence combination, its normalization rule, tagged status, normalized lineage, and record count. The mapping is deliberately limited.

- Hindawi strings map to `Hindawi / Wiley`.
- Valid original-paper DOI prefix `10.1155` maps a later Wiley-labelled record to the same lineage.
- Unrelated Wiley records remain Wiley.
- IOS Press records are labelled `IOS Press (Sage-owned)` but are not merged with all Sage records.
- Common spelling and corporate variants are collapsed for Springer Nature, Elsevier, IEEE, PLOS, and Sage.

The 2024 sensitivity is load-bearing: raw strings yield 983/1,417 (69.37%) for Hindawi and HHI 0.530; lineage normalization yields 1,283/1,417 (90.54%) for Hindawi/Wiley and HHI 0.826. The difference consists of 300 Wiley-labelled records with `10.1155` DOI evidence.

## Comparative event-dependence audit

The comparison uses the same annual metrics for all retractions and five exact, non-exclusive Retraction Watch reason tokens. Each comparison set contains at least 30 records in every year from 2020 through 2025.

Key median annual results:

| Record set | Leading publisher (%) | Effective publishers | Leading journal (%) | Two known dates/all records (%) |
|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|
| All retractions | 22.93 | 8.26 | 8.61 | 10.61 |
| Computer-generated content | 94.49 | 1.12 | 46.57 | 75.10 |
| Paper Mill | 64.69 | 2.44 | 39.11 | 34.16 |
| Compromised Peer Review | 54.47 | 2.49 | 27.35 | 31.40 |
| Unreliable Results/Conclusions | 37.31 | 4.52 | 11.36 | 11.35 |
| Duplication of Article | 25.71 | 7.46 | 5.35 | 8.39 |
| Plagiarism of Article | 24.50 | 7.64 | 6.53 | 7.63 |

Annual values and definitions are in `table-6-comparative-event-dependence.csv`; medians are in `table-7-comparative-summary.csv`.

## Reason-group sensitivity

The broad reason families are author-defined descriptive groups. `table-8-reason-group-sensitivity.csv` compares them with one core exact token per family. Large differences are interpreted as vocabulary dependence, not latent-mechanism change. For example, the broad peer-review group covers 98.53% of 2023 CGC records while the exact `Compromised Peer Review` token covers 0.22%.

## Structured audit trail

`audit-sample.csv` contains 70 deterministic records: five tagged records and five non-tagged controls for the 2010–2019 baseline and for each year from 2020 through 2025. It preserves source fields, predicate result, date-known flag, DOI syntax status, publisher mapping rule, and automated check outcomes.

This file is an inspection worksheet and computational audit trail. It is not represented as an independent coder study or external validation of the Retraction Watch reason assignment. Representative publisher events are corroborated in the manuscript with public journal or publisher sources.

## Regression and integrity controls

The executable analysis:

- refuses a source whose SHA-256 differs from the frozen snapshot;
- asserts the population, tagged count, unknown-date count, valid DOI counts, and headline residuals;
- writes complete top-*k* curves for `k=0…10`;
- writes raw-normalized and broad-core sensitivity tables;
- writes SHA-256 values for every derived output;
- accepts a portable `--source` argument and contains no private repository paths or internal project labels.

No sampling confidence intervals are reported because the data are treated as a frozen metadata census. Coverage, classification, date, and normalization sensitivity—not sampling error—are the relevant uncertainty sources.
