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The disastrous boomerang effects of “citation mania”

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Journal of Cell Communication and Signaling Aims and scope

Abstract

The recent publication of a commentary article by Dadkhah et al. (J Cell Commun Signal 11:181–185, 2017) which addressed issues raised by the citation of questionable scientific papers in current databases and the recent retraction of manuscripts dealing with the biological properties of the CCN1 protein by Lin et al. (J Biol Chem 291(53):27433, 2016) prompted us to examine how this situation reflects an evolution of the original citation system, endangering scientific communication. We argue that the increasing number of publication retractions that have been witnessed over several years is a direct consequence of the bias created by the inconsistency of citation metrics.

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Notes

  1. Ibid B. Cronin

  2. « five minutes in the sun » according to one of our good friend!

  3. see P. Davis « Citation Cartel Journals Denied 2011 Impact factor ». (2012) The Scholarly Kitchen - https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2012/06/29/citation-cartel-journals-denied-2011-impact-factor/

  4. Not only these wrong pratices do not deserve to be publicized, but a critical examination of the social context that exacerbates this kind of problems goes far beyond the scope of this communication.

  5. Wrong references sometimes end up having a long life ...

  6. J. Neimark (2014) Aeon https://aeon.co/essays/are-the-retraction-wars-a-sign-that-science-is-broken; The Editorial Board NY Times (2015) Scientists Who Cheat https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/01/opinion/scientists-who-cheat.html

  7. see The Office of Research Integrity https://ori.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/final.pdf The ORI was created in 1992 following the fusion of OSI (Office of Scientific Integrity) and OSIR (Office of Scientific Integrity Review).

  8. see for example J Cell Commun Signal. 2013 7:309.

  9. It is to provide help and support to scientists facing such kinds of misconduct that I founded in 2000 an Association for the Defense of Ethics and Integrity. http://ethique.integrite.free.fr/index.html

  10. N. P. Rougier and J .Timmer (2017) Ten Simple Rules for Scientific Fraud & Misconduct. https://hal.inria.fr/hal-01562601/document

  11. Hypoxia-inducing factor-1 alpha

  12. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5207167/

  13. Of note, the last author responsible for this publication is a vice-president at Kaohsiung Medical University in Taiwan. He is also the last author of another retracted work published in Nature Cell Biology. http://retractionwatch.com/2017/01/04/prominent-researcher-taiwan-loses-another-paper-image-duplication/; http://retractionwatch.com/2016/11/21/nature-cell-biology-retracts-hotly-debated-cancer-paper/

  14. http://retractionwatch.com/

  15. T. Basu « 64 Scientific Studies retracted by One Publishing Company » Time 18 Aug 2015 http://time.com/4001464/springer-retraction-studies/

  16. The scientist issue of December 2016 reports the top 10 retractions of the year. http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/47813/title/Top-10-Retractions-of-2016/

  17. A total of 43 publications were retracted by BioMed Central (Springer) « following investigation into 50 papers that raised suspicions of fake peer review » (http://retractionwatch.com/2015/03/26/biomed-central-retracting-43-papers-for-fake-peer-review/); http://time.com/4001464/springer-retraction-studies/) and 64 articles showing compromised reviews were retracted by Springer (http://time.com/4001464/springer-retraction-studies/; https://www.springer.com/gp/about-springer/media/statements/retraction-of-articles-from-springer-journals/735218)

  18. For example the retracted manuscript by Huang et al. doi:10.1186/s13000-015-0366-1 is still fully available on Diagnostic Pathology and BioMed Central.

  19. see « Top 10 most highly cited retracted papers. » http://retractionwatch.com/the-retraction-watch-leaderboard/top-10-most-highly-cited-retracted-papers/

  20. As suggested by A. Leask, universities should provide central data bases to store primary data. Such a policy already exits in companies (A. Leask personal communication)

  21. « Kuo is currently facing allegations that he accepted bribes to add co-authors to his papers » Prominent researcher in Taiwan loses another paper for image duplication http://retractionwatch.com/2017/01/04/prominent-researcher-taiwan-loses-another-paper-image-duplication/

  22. https://ori.hhs.gov/print/historical-background

  23. A responsibility index (2009). How to evaluate a nation’s scientific integrity. Nature 457: 512

  24. A total of 106 tumor biology papers from asian groups and published in Tumor Biology between 2012 and 2016 were retracted in 2017. See https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13277-017-5487-6

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Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Professor Bernard Perbal for his advices, help and support during the whole preparation of this manuscript. Thanks are also due to Dr. Herman Yeger, and Professor Andrew Leask for critical review and suggestions.

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  1. International CCN Society, Nice, France

    Annick Perbal

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  1. Annick Perbal
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Perbal, A. The disastrous boomerang effects of “citation mania”. J. Cell Commun. Signal. 11, 291–295 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12079-017-0405-7

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