Purpose Although retractions are commonly considered to be negative, the fact remains that they play a positive role in the academic community. For instance, retractions help scientific enterprise perform its self-correcting function and provide lessons for future researchers; furthermore, they represent the fulfillment of social responsibilities, and they enable scientific communities to offer better monitoring services to keep problematic studies in check. This study aims to provide a thorough overview of the practice of retraction in scientific publishing from the first incident to the present.
Methods We built a database using SQL Server 2016 and homemade artificial intelligence tools to extract and classify data sources including RetractionWatch, official publishers’ archives, and online communities into ready-to-analyze groups and to scan them for new data. After data cleaning, a dataset of 18,603 retractions from 1,753 (when the first retracted paper was published) to February 2019, covering 127 research fields, was established.
Results Notable retraction events include the rise in retracted articles starting in 1999 and the unusual number of retractions in 2010. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Elsevier, and Springer account for nearly 60% of all retracted papers globally, with Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers contributing the most retractions, even though it is not the organization that publishes the most journals. Finally, reasons for retraction are diverse but the most common is “fake peer review”.
Conclusion This study suggests that the frequency of retraction has boomed in the past 20 years, and it underscores the importance of understanding and learning from the practice of retracting scientific articles.
Citations
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Purpose It aimed to investigate how many retracted articles indexed in KoreaMed were cited in both the Scopus and the Korea Medical Citation Index (KoMCI) databases and to investigate whether the frequency of post-retraction citations was different according to the presence of a retraction mark.
Methods Retracted articles from the KoreaMed database were collected on January 28, 2016. Scopus and KoMCI were searched for post-retraction citations, which were defined as citations 1 year after the retraction, excluding retraction-related citations.
Results The 114 retracted articles were found in KoreaMed. The proportion of retracted articles in KoreaMed, the Korean medical journal database, through January 2016 was 0.04% (114/256,000). On the journal homepage, a retraction mark was present for 49 of the 114 retracted articles. Of the 114 retracted articles, 45 were cited in Scopus 176 times. Of the 176 citations, 109 (of 36 retracted articles) were post-retraction citations. The number of citations in KoMCI, except for citations of retraction notices, was 33 (of 14 retracted articles). Of those citations, the number of post-retraction citations in KoMCI was 14 (of 8 retracted articles). The presence of a retraction mark did not influence post-retraction citations (P>0.05). Post-retraction citations were frequent in the range of 1 to 3 years.
Conclusion Post-retraction citations that were found in both Scopus and the KoMCI occurred frequently for retracted articles in KoreaMed. Adoption of Crossmark is recommended as one choice to prevent post-retraction citations.
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