Alexander Robert, Peterson Christopher J, Yang Shengping, Nugent Kenneth
Department of Internal Medicine, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, Lubbock, TX, USA.
School of Medicine, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, Lubbock, TX, USA.
Account Res. 2025 Apr;32(3):263-276. doi: 10.1080/08989621.2023.2272246. Epub 2023 Oct 26.
Academic article retractions occur across all disciplines, though few studies have examined the association between research topics and retraction rates.
We assessed and compared the rate of retraction across several important clinical research topics.
Information about the number of publications, the number of retractions, the retraction rate, and the time to retraction was collected for articles identified by 15 Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms. These articles were published between 1 January 2010 and 31 December 2020. The searches took place between 18 September 2021 and 24 October 2021. The MeSH terms were selected based on our clinical experience with the expectation that there will be multiple publications during the timeframe to use for the searches. Additional topics were selected based on the frequency of controversy in the public media and were identified by the Altmetric Top 100 report.
The mean number of publications for all categories was 181,975 ± 332,245; the median number of publications was 67,991 [Q1, Q3; 31951.5, 138,981.5]. The mean number of retractions was 100.3 ± 251.3, and the median number of retractions was 22 [Q1, Q3; 6.5, 53]. The mean time to retraction ranged from 114 days to 1,409.5 days; the median was 857.3 days [Q1, Q3; 684.7, 1098.6], depending on the topic. The various MeSH term categories used in this study had significant differences in retraction rate and time to retraction. The "Neoplasms" category had the highest total number of retractions (993) and one of the highest retraction rates (75.4 per 100,000 publications).
All PubMed categories analyzed in this study had retracted articles. The median time to retraction was 857 days. The long delays in some categories could contribute to potentially misleading information which might have adverse effects on clinical decisions in patient care and on research design.
Rate of retraction varies across research topics and further studies are needed to explore this relationship.
学术文章撤稿现象在所有学科中都有发生，不过很少有研究探讨研究主题与撤稿率之间的关联。
我们评估并比较了几个重要临床研究主题的撤稿率。
收集了由15个医学主题词（MeSH）确定的文章的发表数量、撤稿数量、撤稿率及撤稿时间等信息。这些文章发表于2010年1月1日至2020年12月31日之间。检索于2021年9月18日至2021年10月24日进行。MeSH词是根据我们的临床经验选定的，预期在该时间段内会有多篇可用于检索的文章。其他主题是根据大众媒体上争议的频率选定的，并由Altmetric百强报告确定。
所有类别的平均发表数量为181,975±332,245；发表数量的中位数为67,991[第一四分位数，第三四分位数；31951.5, 138,981.5]。平均撤稿数量为100.3±251.3，撤稿数量的中位数为22[第一四分位数，第三四分位数；6.5, 53]。撤稿的平均时间从114天到1,409.5天不等；中位数为857.3天[第一四分位数，第三四分位数；684.7, 1098.6]，具体取决于主题。本研究中使用的不同MeSH词类别在撤稿率和撤稿时间上存在显著差异。“肿瘤”类别撤稿总数最高（993篇），撤稿率也是最高之一（每100,000篇发表文章中有75.4篇撤稿）。
本研究分析的所有PubMed类别都有撤稿文章。撤稿的中位数时间为857天。某些类别中的长时间延迟可能会导致潜在的误导性信息，这可能会对患者护理中的临床决策和研究设计产生不利影响。
撤稿率因研究主题而异，需要进一步研究来探索这种关系。
