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Citing documents of Wakefield’s retracted article: the domino effect of authors and journals

Author

Listed:
  • Jacqueline Leta

    (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro)

  • Kizi Araujo

    (Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, Instituto de Comunicação e Informação Científica e Tecnológica em Saúde)

  • Stephanie Treiber

    (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro)

Abstract

The present study aims to find out the origin of authors and the main sources in which citing documents of Wakefield’s 1998 retracted article are published in order to understand whether they act as promoters of a negative domino effect, there is, keeping alive a retracted article due to fraudulent data and analysis on the relationship between MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine and autism. The metadata of the 1577 citing documents of Wakefield’s article were downloaded from Scopus in three files according to the year of publication: 1998–2004 (partial retraction), 2005–2010 (in between partial and full retraction) and 2011–2020 (post full retraction). The number of citing documents in each period is 329, 411 and 837, respectively. A comparison between first and last periods indicates an impressive growth of language, authors, countries as well as journals from broader field coverage. Also, recent citing articles are highly cited and, even in a negative context, they contribute to the diffusion of a fraudulent article in the science context. The findings reinforce the urgency to create internal strategies in the scientific communication process, mainly inside the editorial flow, in order to reduce the dissemination of a retracted article that, in this case, is still harmful to society. At the end, the creation of an automatic mechanism to detect retracted articles included in the reference list of accepted articles is suggested.

Suggested Citation

  • Jacqueline Leta & Kizi Araujo & Stephanie Treiber, 2022. "Citing documents of Wakefield’s retracted article: the domino effect of authors and journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(12), pages 7333-7349, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:127:y:2022:i:12:d:10.1007_s11192-022-04353-2
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-022-04353-2
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Quan-Hoang Vuong, 2020. "Reform retractions to make them more transparent," Nature, Nature, vol. 582(7811), pages 149-149, June.
    2. Judit Bar-Ilan & Gali Halevi, 2017. "Post retraction citations in context: a case study," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 113(1), pages 547-565, October.
    3. 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.
    4. Xin Gu & Karen L. Blackmore, 2016. "Recent trends in academic journal growth," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 108(2), pages 693-716, August.
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    Cited by:

    1. 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.

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