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Temporal characteristics of retracted articles

Author

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  • Judit Bar-Ilan

    (Bar-Ilan University)

  • Gali Halevi

    (Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai)

Abstract

There are three main reasons for retraction: (1) ethical misconduct (e.g. duplicate publication, plagiarism, missing credit, no IRB, ownership issues, authorship issues, interference in the review process, citation manipulation); (2) scientific distortion (e.g. data manipulation, fraudulent data, unsupported conclusions, questionable data validity, non-replicability, data errors—even if unintended); (3) administrative error (e.g. article published in wrong issue, not the final version published, publisher errors). The first category, although highly deplorable has almost no effect on the advancement of science, the third category is relatively minor. The papers belonging to the second category are most troublesome from the scientific point of view, as they are misleading and have serious negative implications not only on science but also on society. In this paper, we explore some temporal characteristics of retracted articles, including time of publication, years to retract, growth of post retraction citations over time and social media attention by the three major categories. The data set comprises 995 retracted articles retrieved in October 2014 from Elsevier’s ScienceDirect. Citations and Mendeley reader counts were retrieved four times within 4 years, which allowed us to examine post-retraction longitudinal trends not only for citations, but also for Mendeley reader counts. The major findings are that both citation counts and Mendeley reader counts continue to grow after retraction.

Suggested Citation

  • Judit Bar-Ilan & Gali Halevi, 2018. "Temporal characteristics of retracted articles," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(3), pages 1771-1783, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:116:y:2018:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-018-2802-y
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-018-2802-y
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    2. Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva & Helmar Bornemann-Cimenti, 2017. "Why do some retracted papers continue to be cited?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 110(1), pages 365-370, January.
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    Cited by:

    1. Judit Dobránszki & Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva, 2019. "Corrective factors for author- and journal-based metrics impacted by citations to accommodate for retractions," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(1), pages 387-398, October.
    2. Ivan Heibi & Silvio Peroni, 2021. "A qualitative and quantitative analysis of open citations to retracted articles: the Wakefield 1998 et al.'s case," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(10), pages 8433-8470, October.
    3. Tom Coupé & W. Robert Reed, 2021. "Do Negative Replications Affect Citations?," Working Papers in Economics 21/14, University of Canterbury, Department of Economics and Finance.
    4. Tom Coupé & W. Robert Reed & Christian Zimmerman, 2021. "Paving the Road for Replications: Experimental Results from an Online Research Repository," Working Papers in Economics 21/09, University of Canterbury, Department of Economics and Finance.
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    6. Jodi Schneider & Di Ye & Alison M. Hill & Ashley S. Whitehorn, 2020. "Continued post-retraction citation of a fraudulent clinical trial report, 11 years after it was retracted for falsifying data," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(3), pages 2877-2913, December.
    7. Wenjun Liu & Lei Lei, 2021. "Retractions in the Middle East from 1999 to 2018: a bibliometric analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(6), pages 4687-4700, June.
    8. Gonzalo Marco-Cuenca & José Antonio Salvador-Oliván & Rosario Arquero-Avilés, 2021. "Fraud in scientific publications in the European Union. An analysis through their retractions," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(6), pages 5143-5164, June.
    9. Sergio Copiello, 2020. "Other than detecting impact in advance, alternative metrics could act as early warning signs of retractions: tentative findings of a study into the papers retracted by PLoS ONE," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(3), pages 2449-2469, December.
    10. Domenico A. Maisano & Luca Mastrogiacomo & Fiorenzo Franceschini, 2020. "Short-term effects of non-competitive funding to single academic researchers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(3), pages 1261-1280, June.
    11. Frederique Bordignon, 2020. "Self-correction of science: a comparative study of negative citations and post-publication peer review," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(2), pages 1225-1239, August.
    12. Lingzi Feng & Junpeng Yuan & Liying Yang, 2020. "An observation framework for retracted publications in multiple dimensions," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(2), pages 1445-1457, November.
    13. Salim Moussa, 2022. "The propagation of error: retracted articles in marketing and their citations," Italian Journal of Marketing, Springer, vol. 2022(1), pages 11-36, March.
    14. Weishu Liu, 2019. "The data source of this study is Web of Science Core Collection? Not enough," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(3), pages 1815-1824, December.
    15. Shenghui Li & Wenyan Xu & Jingqi Yin, 2023. "Cross-cultural differences in retracted publications of male and female from a global perspective," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(7), pages 3805-3826, July.
    16. Tove Faber Frandsen & Mette Brandt Eriksen & David Mortan Grøne Hammer & Janne Buck Christensen, 2019. "Fragmented publishing: a large-scale study of health science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(3), pages 1729-1743, June.
    17. Bor Luen Tang, 2023. "Some Insights into the Factors Influencing Continuous Citation of Retracted Scientific Papers," Publications, MDPI, vol. 11(4), pages 1-14, October.
    18. Bakthavachalam Elango & Marcin Kozak & Periyaswamy Rajendran, 2019. "Analysis of retractions in Indian science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(2), pages 1081-1094, May.
    19. Kiran Sharma, 2021. "Team size and retracted citations reveal the patterns of retractions from 1981 to 2020," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(10), pages 8363-8374, October.
    20. Catalin Toma & Liliana Padureanu & Bogdan Toma, 2022. "Correction of the Scientific Production: Publisher Performance Evaluation Using a Dataset of 4844 PubMed Retractions," Publications, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-25, April.
    21. Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva & Serhii Nazarovets, 2023. "Partial citation analysis of five classes of retracted papers, and devising a new four-tier citation classification system for retracted (and other) papers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(8), pages 4887-4894, August.
    22. Bakthavachalam Elango, 2021. "Retracted articles in the biomedical literature from Indian authors," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(5), pages 3965-3981, May.
    23. Felipe Eduardo Valencise & Camila Vantini Capasso Palamim & Fernando Augusto Lima Marson, 2023. "Retraction of Clinical Trials about the SARS-CoV-2 Infection: An Unaddressed Problem and Its Possible Impact on Coronavirus Disease (COVID)-19 Treatment," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(3), pages 1-16, January.
    24. Tom Coupé & W. Robert Reed & Christian Zimmermann, 2021. "Paving the Road for Replications: Experimental Results from an Online Research Bibliography," Working Papers 2021-013, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, revised 24 Feb 2022.
    25. Behzad Gholampour & Sajad Gholampour & Alireza Noruzi & Clément Arsenault & Thomas Haertlé & Ali Akbar Saboury, 2022. "Retracted articles in oncology in the last three decades: frequency, reasons, and themes," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(4), pages 1841-1865, April.

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