Some Insights into the Factors Influencing Continuous Citation of Retracted Scientific Papers

IF 4.6 Q1 INFORMATION SCIENCE & LIBRARY SCIENCE Publications Pub Date : 2023-10-08 DOI:10.3390/publications11040047
Bor Luen Tang
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Abstract

Once retracted, the citation count of a research paper might be intuitively expected to drop precipitously. Here, we assessed the post-retraction citation of life and medical sciences papers from two top-ranked, multidisciplinary journals Nature and Science, from 2010 to 2018. Post-retraction citations accounted for a staggering 47.7% and 40.9% of total citations (median values), respectively, of the papers included in our analysis. These numbers are comparable with those from two journals with lower impact factors, and with retracted papers from the physical sciences discipline. A more qualitative assessment of five papers from the two journals with a high percentage (>50%) of post-retraction citations, all of which are associated with misconduct, reveal different contributing reasons and factors. Retracted papers associated with highly publicized misconduct cases are more prone to being cited with the retraction status indicated, or projected negatively (such as in the context of research ethics and misconduct discussions), with the latter also indicated by cross-disciplinary citations by humanities and social sciences articles. Retracted papers that retained significant validity in their main findings/conclusions may receive a large number of neutral citations that are somewhat blind to the retraction. Retracted papers in popular subject areas with massive publication outputs, particularly secondary publications such as reviews, may also have a high background citation noise. Our findings add further insights to the nature of post-retraction citations beyond the plain notion that these are largely made through sheer ignorance or negligence by the citing authors.
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影响被撤稿科技论文持续被引因素的几点认识
一旦撤回,一篇研究论文的引用数可能会直观地急剧下降。在这里,我们评估了2010年至2018年两本排名最高的多学科期刊《自然》和《科学》的生命和医学科学论文的撤稿后引用情况。在我们分析的论文中,撤稿后的引用量分别占总引用量(中位数)的47.7%和40.9%。这些数字与影响因子较低的两种期刊的数字相当,也与物理科学学科撤回的论文相当。对来自两家期刊的五篇论文进行了更定性的评估,这些论文在撤稿后被引用的比例很高(>50%),所有这些都与不当行为有关,揭示了不同的原因和因素。与高度公开的不当行为案例相关的撤稿论文更容易被引用时显示撤稿状态,或负面预测(例如在研究伦理和不当行为讨论的背景下),后者也会被人文和社会科学文章的跨学科引用所显示。被撤回的论文在其主要发现/结论中保留了显著的有效性,可能会收到大量中立的引用,这些引用在某种程度上对撤稿是盲目的。发表量大的热门学科领域的撤稿论文,特别是次要出版物,如综述,也可能有很高的背景引文噪声。我们的发现进一步深入了解了撤稿后引用的本质,而不是简单地认为这些引用主要是由于引用作者的无知或疏忽造成的。
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来源期刊
Publications
Publications Social Sciences-Library and Information Sciences
CiteScore
6.50
自引率
1.90%
发文量
40
审稿时长
11 weeks
期刊介绍: The scope of Publications includes: Theory and practice of scholarly communication Digitisation and innovations in scholarly publishing technologies Metadata, infrastructure, and linking the scholarly record Publishing policies and editorial/peer-review workflows Financial models for scholarly publishing Copyright, licensing and legal issues in publishing Research integrity and publication ethics Issues and best practices in the publication of non-traditional research outputs (e.g., data, software/code, protocols, data management plans, grant proposals, etc.) Issues in the transition to open access and open science Inclusion and participation of traditionally excluded actors Language issues in publication processes and products Traditional and alternative models of peer review Traditional and alternative means of assessment and evaluation of research and its impact, including bibliometrics and scientometrics The place of research libraries, scholarly societies, funders and others in scholarly communication.
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