Abstract
Perpetuation of retracted publications is an ongoing and even increasing problem in the scientific community. In addition to the direct distortion of scientific credibility, the use of retracted findings for interpretation und discussion in subsequent publications poses the risk of drawing false and, for example in medical research, even harmful conclusions. One major contributor to this development is that many authors are not aware of the retraction status of a paper they cite. COPE guidelines state that the “retracted status should be indicated as clearly as possible”, but this is definitely not true for many retracted publications. Likewise, databases do not consequently link retracted articles with the notice of retraction. Furthermore, many papers are deposit in the “original”, i.e. pre-retraction version on personal or institutional websites or online repositories. Similarly, printed “stock files” are obviously unaffected by a retraction. Clear identification of a retracted article using a watermark and in databases is a crucial step while incorporation of an electronic “retraction check” in reference management software and during the online submission is necessary to detect and avoid citing retracted literature. Solving this problem needs the close attention of everybody involved in the publishing process: authors, reviewers, and publishers.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Bornemann-Cimenti, H., Szilagyi, I. S., & Sandner-Kiesling, A. (2016). Perpetuation of retracted publications using the example of the Scott S. Reuben case: Incidences, reasons and possible improvements. Science and Engineering Ethics,. doi:10.1007/s11948-015-9680-y.
Budd, J. M., Sievert, M. E., Schultz, T. R., & Scoville, C. (1999). Effects of article retraction on citation and practice in medicine. Bulletin of the Medical Library Association, 87(4), 437–443.
Couzin, J., & Unger, K. (2006). Scientific misconduct. Cleaning up the paper trail. Science, 312, 38–43.
Davis, P. M. (2012). The persistence of error: A study of retracted articles on the Internet and in personal libraries. Journal of the Medical Library Association, 100(3), 184–189. doi:10.3163/1536-5050.100.3.008.
Eisenach, J. C. (2009). Data fabrication and article retraction. Anesthesiology, 110, 955–956. doi:10.1097/ALN.0b013e3181a06bf9.
Elia, N., Wager, E., & Tramèr, M. R. (2014). Fate of articles that warranted retraction due to ethical concerns: A descriptive cross-sectional study. PLoS ONE, 1, e85846. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0085846.
Fukuhara, A., Matsuda, M., Nishizawa, M., Segawa, K., Tanaka, M., Kishimoto, K., et al. (2005). Visfatin: A protein secreted by visceral fat that mimics the effects of insulin. Science, 307(5708), 426–430. doi:10.1126/science.1097243.
Neale, A. V., Northrup, J., Dailey, R., Marks, E., & Abrams, J. (2007). Correction and use of biomedical literature affected by scientific misconduct. Science and Engineering Ethics, 13, 5–24. doi:10.1007/s11948-006-0003-1.
Oransky, I. (2016). How to better flag retractions? Here’s what PubMed is trying. http://retractionwatch.com/2016/07/20/how-to-better-flag-retractions-heres-what-pubmed-is-trying/. Last Accessed 18 Oct 2016.
Pfeifer, M. P., & Snodgrass, G. L. (1990). The continued use of retracted, invalid scientific literature. Journal of the American Medical Association, 263, 1420–1423. doi:10.1001/jama.1990.03440100140020.
RoMEO. (2016). Statistics for the 2264 publishers in the RoMEO database. http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/statistics.php. Last Accessed 18 Oct 2016.
Sox, H. C., & Rennie, D. (2006). Research misconduct, retraction, and cleansing the medical literature: Lessons from the Poehlman case. Annals of Internal Medicine, 144, 609–613.
Teixeira da Silva, J. A. (2015a). For whom the bell tolls: Downstream effects of retractions and the bump-on effects of post-publication peer review. International Journal of Plant Biology & Research, 3(4), 1050.
Teixeira da Silva, J. A. (2015b). The importance of retractions and the need to correct the downstream literature. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 29(2), 353–356.
Teixeira da Silva, J. A. (2016a). Silent or stealth retractions, the dangerous voices of the unknown, deleted literature. Publishing Research Quarterly, 32(1), 44–53. doi:10.1007/s12109-015-9439-y.
Teixeira da Silva, J. A. (2016b). An error is an error… is an erratum. The ethics of not correcting errors in the science literature. Publishing Research Quarterly, 32(3), 220–226. doi:10.1007/s12109-016-9469-0.
Teixeira da Silva, J. A., & Dobránszki, J. (2015). The authorship of deceased scientists and their posthumous responsibilities. Science Editor (CSE), 38(3/4), 98–100.
Teixeira da Silva, J. A., & Dobránszki, J. (2016). Notices and policies for retractions, expressions of concern, errata and corrigenda: Their importance, content, and context. Science and Engineering Ethics,. doi:10.1007/s11948-016-9769-y.
van der Vet, P. E., & Nijveen, H. (2016). Propagation of errors in citation networks: A study involving the entire citation network of a widely cited paper published in, and later retracted from, the journal Nature. Research Integrity and Peer Review, 1, 3. doi:10.1186/s41073-016-0008-5.
Wager, E., Barbour, V., Yentis, S., & Kleinert, S. (2009). Retractions: Guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Croatian Medical Journal, 50(6), 532–535. doi:10.3325/cmj.2009.50.532.
Wright, K., & McDaid, C. (2011). Reporting of article retractions in bibliographic databases and online journals. Journal of the Medical Library Association, 99(2), 164–167. doi:10.3163/1536-5050.99.2.010.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Judit Dobránszki (University of Debrecen, Hungary) for providing data from Elsevier’s Scopus and Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science™ pertaining to the Fukuhara et al. (2005) paper.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding authors
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Additional information
Disclaimer The first author is not associated with any academic institute, blog or web-site. Screen-shots used in Fig. 1 used under the fair-use agreement.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Teixeira da Silva, J.A., Bornemann-Cimenti, H. Why do some retracted papers continue to be cited?. Scientometrics 110, 365–370 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-2178-9
Received:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-2178-9