Post retraction citations in context: a case study

Abstract

This study examines the nature of citations to articles that were retracted in 2014. Out of 987 retracted articles found in ScienceDirect, an Elsevier full text database, we selected all articles that received more than 10 citations between January 2015 and March 2016. Since the retraction year was known for only about 83% of the retracted articles, we chose to concentrate on recent citations, that for certain appeared after the cited paper was retracted. Overall, we analyzed 238 citing documents and identified the context of each citation as positive, negative or neutral. Our results show that the vast majority of citations to retracted articles are positive despite of the clear retraction notice on the publisher's platform and regardless of the reason for retraction. Positive citations can be also seen to articles that were retracted due to ethical misconduct, data fabrication and false reports. In light of these results, we listed some recommendations for publishers that could potentially minimize the referral to retracted studies as valid.

Keywords: Negative citations; Neutral citation; Positive citations; Post retraction citations; Retracted articles.

Fig. 1

Number of publications per year that were later retracted and the number of publications retracted by year

Fig. 2

Number of years between publication and retraction

Fig. 3

Number of citations per year—Donmez et al. article

Fig. 4

Distribution of the post retraction citations of the Donmez et al. article

Fig. 5

Number of citations per year—Séralini et al. article

Fig. 6

Number of citations per year—Mukherjeee et al. article

Fig. 7

Number of citations per year—Walumba et al. article

Fig. 8

Number of citations—Li et al. article

Fig. 9

Number of citations—Hwang et al. article

Fig. 10

Number of citations per year—Qiang et al. article

Fig. 11

Number of citations per year—Ji et al. article

Fig. 12

Number of citations per year—Zhang et al. paper

Fig. 13

Number of citations per year—Nanjawade et al. article

Fig. 14

Number of citations per year—Yamagata et al. article

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Number of citations per year—Vaidvanathan et al. article

Fig. 16

Number of citations per year—Liu et al. article

Fig. 17

Number of citations by year—Nabae et al. article