Research Square Company, Durham, North Carolina, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2022 May 2;17(5):e0267971. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0267971. eCollection 2022.
Retractions have been on the rise in the life and clinical sciences in the last decade, likely due to both broader accessibility of published scientific research and increased vigilance on the part of publishers. In this same period, there has been a greater than ten-fold increase in the posting of preprints by researchers in these fields. While this development has significantly accelerated the rate of research dissemination and has benefited early-career researchers eager to show productivity, it has also introduced challenges with respect to provenance tracking, version linking, and, ultimately, back-propagation of events such as corrigenda, expressions of concern, and retractions that occur on the journal-published version. The aim of this study was to understand the extent of this problem among preprint servers that routinely link their preprints to the corollary versions published in journals. To present a snapshot of the current state of downstream retractions of articles preprinted in three large preprint servers (Research Square, bioRxiv, and medRxiv), the DOIs of the journal-published versions linked to preprints were matched to entries in the Retraction Watch database. A total of 30 retractions were identified, representing only 0.01% of all content posted on these servers. Of these, 11 retractions were clearly noted by the preprint servers; however, the existence of a preprint was only acknowledged by the retracting journal in one case. The time from publication to retraction averaged 278 days, notably lower than the average for articles overall (839 days). In 70% of cases, retractions downstream of preprints were due-at least in part-to ethical or procedural misconduct. In 63% of cases, the nature of the retraction suggested that the conclusions were no longer reliable. Over time, the lack of propagation of critical information across the publication life cycle will pose a threat to the scholarly record and to scientific integrity. It is incumbent on preprint servers, publishers, and the systems that connect them to address these issues before their scale becomes untenable.
在过去十年中，生命科学和临床医学领域的撤稿数量不断增加，这可能是由于已发表的科学研究更广泛地可获取，以及出版商更加警惕。在同一时期，这些领域的研究人员发布预印本的数量增加了十倍以上。虽然这一发展极大地加速了研究传播的速度，并使渴望展示生产力的早期职业研究人员受益，但它也带来了与出处跟踪、版本链接以及最终回溯事件（如勘误、关注表达和在已发表期刊版本上发生的撤稿）相关的挑战。本研究的目的是了解在定期将预印本链接到期刊上发表的相应版本的预印本服务器中，这种问题的严重程度。为了展示三个大型预印本服务器（Research Square、bioRxiv 和 medRxiv）中预印本文章下游撤稿的当前状况，将与预印本相关联的已发表期刊版本的 DOI 与 Retraction Watch 数据库中的条目进行匹配。共发现 30 篇撤稿，仅占这些服务器上发布的所有内容的 0.01%。其中，11 篇撤稿被预印本服务器明确指出；然而，在一种情况下，撤稿期刊仅承认存在预印本。从发表到撤稿的平均时间为 278 天，明显低于总体文章的平均时间（839 天）。在 70%的情况下，预印本下游的撤稿至少部分是由于道德或程序不当行为。在 63%的情况下，撤稿的性质表明结论不再可靠。随着时间的推移，在出版生命周期中关键信息传播的缺失将对学术记录和科学诚信构成威胁。预印本服务器、出版商和连接它们的系统有责任在其规模变得不可持续之前解决这些问题。
