Preventive Medicine and Public Health, University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain.
Preventive Medicine and Public Health, University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain
BMJ Glob Health. 2020 Nov;5(11). doi: 10.1136/bmjgh-2020-003719.
Retracted articles continue to be cited after retraction, and this could have consequences for the scientific community and general population alike. This study was conducted to analyse the association of retraction on citations received by retracted papers due to misconduct using two-time frames: during a postretraction period equivalent to the time the article had been in print before retraction; and during the total postretraction period.
Quasiexperimental, pre-post evaluation study. A total of 304 retracted original articles and literature reviews indexed in MEDLINE fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Articles were required to have been published in a journal indexed in MEDLINE from January 2013 through December 2015 and been retracted between January 2014 and December 2016. The main outcome was the number of citations received before and after retraction. Results were broken down by journal quartile according to impact factor and the most cited papers during the preretraction period were specifically analysed.
There was an increase in postretraction citations when compared with citations received preretraction. There were some exceptions however: first, citations received by articles published in first-quartile journals decreased immediately after retraction (p<0.05), only to increase again after some time had elapsed; and second, postretraction citations decreased significantly in the case of articles that had received many citations before their retraction (p<0.05).
The results indicate that retraction of articles has no association on citations in the long term, since the retracted articles continue to be cited, thus circumventing their retraction.
已被撤回的文章在撤回后仍被引用，这可能对科学界和普通大众都产生影响。本研究旨在分析由于不当行为而被撤回的文章在撤回后的引文与撤回前的印刷时间之间的关系。
这是一项准实验、前后评估研究。共有 304 篇被 MEDLINE 索引的撤回原始文章和文献综述符合纳入标准。文章必须在 2013 年 1 月至 2015 年 12 月期间在 MEDLINE 索引的期刊上发表，并在 2014 年 1 月至 2016 年 12 月期间被撤回。主要结果是撤回前后收到的引文数量。根据影响因素，按期刊四分位数对结果进行了细分，并特别分析了撤回前引用最多的论文。
与撤回前收到的引文相比，撤回后收到的引文有所增加。然而，也有一些例外情况：首先，发表在第一四分位数期刊上的文章的引文在撤回后立即减少（p<0.05），但过一段时间后又再次增加；其次，在撤回前已收到大量引文的文章中，撤回后的引文显著减少（p<0.05）。
研究结果表明，从长期来看，文章的撤回与引文没有关联，因为被撤回的文章仍在被引用，从而规避了它们的撤回。
