Research Integrity Risk Index

Research Integrity Risk Index (RI²) is a diagnostic, bibliometric framework designed to assess institutional exposure to selected research-integrity-related risks. Developed in 2025 by Lokman Meho (لقمان محّو), a professor and University Librarian at the American University of Beirut, RI² is presented as complementary to conventional global university rankings, which primarily emphasize publication volume and citation counts. RI² evaluates universities using three institution-level bibliometric indicators associated with integrity risk signals in scholarly publishing: retracted journal articles, publications in journals that were subsequently delisted from major bibliographic databases, and institutional self-citation patterns. The framework emerged amid broader debates over the limitations of citation- and volume-based ranking methodologies in capturing research integrity-related risks.

How does RI² work?

Methodology

RI² assesses academic institutions using three bibliometric indicators derived from verifiable publications and citation data.

Delisted Journal Risk (D Rate) measures the percentage of an institution's research output published in journals that were later delisted from Scopus or Web of Science following those databases' re-evaluation processes for editorial or publishing standards.

Retraction Risk (R-Rate) measures the number of retracted journal articles per 1,000 published articles over a defined publication window. Retraction data are compiled and cross-validated using multiple independent sources, including the Retraction Watch Database, MEDLINE, Scopus, and Web of Science, with filtering procedures applied to exclude duplicate records and retractions unrelated to authorship issues.

Self citation Rate (S-Rate) measures the proportion of citations to an institution's publications that originate from the same institution. Citation data are sourced from InCites, and the indicator is reported descriptively and interpreted in relation to peer institutions within the same field classifications.

All three indicators are field normalized and benchmarked against a fixed global reference group comprising the 1,000 publishing universities worldwide. Each indicator is scaled to a 0–1 range using Min-Max normalization with caps applied to extreme values, and the normalized indicators are combined using equal weighting to generate the composite RI2 score.

Based on their composite scores, institutions are assigned to one of five percentile-based risk tiers: Low Risk, Normal Variation, Watch List, High Risk, and Red Flag. Tier placement reflects relative exposure to integrity-related publishing risks and is not intended as an assessment of research quality, misconduct, or institutional performance.

Detailed methodology is available online on the official .

Output and Visualization

RI² website provides tabular results for the world's most publishing universities along with that illustrate country-level D-Rate and R-rate, allowing examination of geographic variations in risk profiles.

Red-flagged universities by Research Integrity Risk Index (RI²)

This table lists the universities flagged as highest-risk (Red Tier) in the Research Integrity Risk Index (RI²).

External reception and Adoption

RI² has received coverage in international scientific and higher-education media. A 2025 article in Nature discussed institutional retraction patterns and cited RI² data in its analysis of universities with high numbers of retracted publications. University World News reported on the development of RI² as a response to concerns about metric-driven distortions in global university rankings, describing the index as a diagnostic tool rather than a punitive ranking.

Regional and national media outlets have also reported on RI² findings in country-specific contexts. In India, Science Chronicle discussed universities classified in the highest RI² risk tiers in the context of debates on research assessment and retractions. Coverage in Al-Ghad (Jordan) similarly reported on RI² results in relation to national higher-education institutions.

Beyond media reporting, RI² has been referenced in scholarly and policy-oriented discussions on integrity-aware approaches to research assessment. A commentary published by the Indian Society of Artificial Intelligence and Law (ISAIL) cited RI² in discussions on incorporating research-integrity considerations into institutional evaluation frameworks.

In 2026, Egypt's Supreme Council of Universities of the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research issued a government titled Research Integrity Risk Index (RI²), presenting RI² as an early-warning, data-driven framework for assessing institution-level integrity-related publishing risks and offering recommendations for Egyptian universities and research-governance bodies.

Related methodological developments

Following the introduction of RI², subsequent work in the research-assessment literature has employed institution-level indicators similar to those proposed in the framework. In particular, retractions, publications in delisted journals, and self-citation were recently used by John P. A. Ioannidis and collaborators as adjustment factors in an institution-level percentile ranking framework.

See also

• Retraction Watch
• Scientific misconduct
• Citation Impact
• Predatory publishing
• Retraction in academic publishing
• Publish or perish
• Citation

External links