Institute of Anesthesia and Intensive Care Unit, University Hospital of Padua, Padua, Italy.
Department of Medicine, University of Padua, Padua, Italy.
Anesthesiology. 2022 Sep 1;137(3):341-350. doi: 10.1097/ALN.0000000000004302.
Retracted articles represent research withdrawn from the existing body of literature after publication. Research articles may be retracted for several reasons ranging from honest errors to intentional misconduct. They should not be used as reliable sources, and it is unclear why they are cited occasionally by other articles. This study hypothesized that several mechanisms may contribute to citing retracted literature and aimed to analyze the characteristics of articles citing retracted literature in anesthesiology and critical care.
Using the Retraction Watch database, we retrieved retracted articles on anesthesiology and intensive care medicine up to August 16, 2021, and identified the papers citing these retracted articles. A survey designed to investigate the reasons for citing these articles was sent to the corresponding authors of the citing papers.
We identified 478 retracted articles, 220 (46%) of which were cited at least once. We contacted 1297 corresponding authors of the papers that cited these articles, 417 (30%) of whom responded to our survey and were included in the final analysis. The median number of authors in the analyzed articles was five, and the median elapsed time from retraction to citation was 3 yr. Most of the corresponding authors (372, 89%) were unaware of the retracted status of the cited article, mainly because of inadequate notification of the retraction status in journals and/or databases and the use of stored copies.
The corresponding authors were generally unaware of the retraction of the cited article, usually because of inadequate identification of the retracted status in journals and/or web databases and the use of stored copies. Awareness of this phenomenon and rigorous control of the cited references before submitting a paper are of fundamental importance in research.
撤稿文章是指在发表后从现有文献中撤回的研究。研究文章可能由于各种原因被撤回，从诚实的错误到故意的不当行为。它们不应该被用作可靠的来源，而且不清楚为什么其他文章偶尔会引用它们。本研究假设，有几种机制可能导致引用撤稿文献，并旨在分析麻醉学和危重病学中引用撤稿文献的文章的特征。
使用撤稿观察数据库，我们检索了截至 2021 年 8 月 16 日的麻醉学和重症监护医学领域的撤稿文章，并确定了引用这些撤稿文章的论文。我们设计了一项调查，旨在调查引用这些文章的原因，并将其发送给引用文章的通讯作者。
我们确定了 478 篇撤稿文章，其中 220 篇（46%）至少被引用了一次。我们联系了引用这些文章的 1297 位通讯作者，其中 417 位（30%）回复了我们的调查，并纳入了最终分析。分析文章的作者中位数为 5 位，从撤稿到引用的中位时间为 3 年。大多数通讯作者（372 位，89%）不知道所引用文章的撤稿状态，主要是因为期刊和/或数据库对撤稿状态的通知不足，以及使用存储副本。
通讯作者通常不知道所引用文章的撤稿情况，通常是因为期刊和/或网络数据库中对撤稿状态的识别不足，以及使用存储副本。在提交论文之前，对这种现象的认识和对引用参考文献的严格控制，对研究至关重要。
