Retractions in general and internal medicine in a high-profile scientific indexing database
Keywords:
Databases, Bibliographic, Bibliometrics, Retraction of publication, Scientific misconduct, Journal impact factorsAbstract
CONTEXT AND OBJECTIVE: Increased frequency of retractions has recently been observed, and retrac- tions are important events that deserve scientific investigation. This study aimed to characterize cases of retraction within general and internal medicine in a high-profile database, with interest in the country of origin of the article and the impact factor (IF) of the journal in which the retraction was made. DESIGN AND SETTING: This study consisted of reviewing retraction notes in the Thomson-Reuters Web of Knowledge (WoK) indexing database, within general and internal medicine. METHODS: The retractions were classified as plagiarism/duplication, error, fraud and authorship problems and then aggregated into two categories: “plagiarism/duplication” and “others.” The countries of origin of the articles were dichotomized according to the median of the indicator “citations per paper” (CPP), and the IF was dichotomized according to its median within general and internal medicine, also obtained from the WoK database. These variables were analyzed using contingency tables according to CPP (high versus low), IF (high versus low) and period (1992-2002 versus 2003-2014). The relative risk (RR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) were estimated for plagiarism/duplication. RESULTS: A total of 86 retraction notes were identified, and retraction reasons were found for 80 of them. The probability that plagiarism/duplication was the reason for retraction was more than three times higher for the low CPP group (RR: 3.4; 95% CI: [1.9-6.2]), and similar results were seen for the IF analysis. CONCLUSION: The study identified greater incidence of plagiarism/duplication among retractions from countries with lower scientific impact
Downloads
References
Oransky MA. The first-ever English language retraction (1756)? Retraction Watch. Available from: http://retractionwatch.com/2012/02/27/the-first-ever-english-language-retraction-1756/. Accessed in 2015 (Mar 16).
Cokol M, Ozbay F, Rodriguez-Esteban R. Retraction rates are on the rise. EMBO Rep. 2008;9(1):2.
Fang FC, Steen RG, Casadevall A. Misconduct accounts for the majority of retracted scientific publications. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2012;109(42):17028-33.
Roig M. Avoiding plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and other questionable writing practices: A guide to ethical writing. Michigan State University. Available from: www.cse.msu.edu/~alexliu/plagiarism.pdf. Accessed in 2015 (Mar 16).
Grieneisen ML, Zhang M. A comprehensive survey of retracted articles from the scholarly literature. PLoS One. 2012;7(10):e44118.
Steen RG. Retractions in the scientific literature: is the incidence of research fraud increasing? J Med Ethics. 2011;37(4):249-53.
Stretton S, Bramich NJ, Keys JR, et al. Publication misconduct and plagiarism retractions: a systematic, retrospective study. Curr Med Res Opin. 2012;28(10):1575-83.
Amos KA. The ethics of scholarly publishing: exploring differences in plagiarism and duplicate publication across nations. J Med Libr Assoc. 2014;102(2):87-91.
Crossref.org. CrossCheck. Available from: www.crossref.org/crosscheck/index.html. Accessed in 2015 (Mar 16).
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Introduction to the guidelines for handling plagiarism complaints. Available from: www.ieee.org/publications_standards/ publications/rights/plagiarism.html. Accessed in 2015 (Mar 16).
Thomson Reuters. Web of Knowledge. Available from: https://webofknowledge.com. Accessed in 2015 (Mar 16).
Thomson Reuters. Journal Citation Reports. Available from: http:// thomsonreuters.com/en/products-services/scholarly-scientific- research/research-management-and-evaluation/journal-citation-reports.html. Accessed in 2015 (Mar 16).
Vinkler P. The evaluation of research by scientometric indicators. New York: Woodhead Publishing Ltd.; 2010.
Thompson Reuters. Science Watch. Top 20 countries in all fields, 2001-August 31, 2011. Available from: sciencewatch.com/articles/ top-20-countries-all-fields-2001-august-31-2011. Accessed in 2015 (Mar 16).
Hermes-Lima M, Santos NC, Alencastro AC, Ferreira ST. Whither Latin America? Trends and challenges of science in Latin America. IUBMB Life. 2007;59(4-5):199-210.
Chuang KY, Huang YL, Ho YS. A bibliometric and citation analysis of stroke-related research in Taiwan. Scientometrics. 2007;72(2):201-212. Available from: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11192-007-1721-0. Accessed in 2015 (Mar 16).
Li Z, Ho YS.Use of citation per publication as an indicator to evaluate contingent valuation research. Scientometrics. 2008;75(1): 97-110. Available from: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CCoQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.researchgate.net%2Fprofile%2FYuh-Shan_Ho%2Fpublication%2F242916319_Use_of_citation_per_publication_as_an_indicator_to_evaluate_contingent_valuation_research%2Flinks%2F0f31753c0f394499e3000000.pdf&ei=jSEHVahhsvuwBNr1gYAJ&usg=AFQjCNF2Sr91YlBcxlsUNPI9-vCkM3iS6Q&bvm=bv.88198703,d.cWc. Accessed in 2015 (Mar 16).
Butler L. Explaining Australia’s increased share of ISI publications--the effects of a funding formula based on publication counts. Research Policy. 2003;32(1):143-155. Available from: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733302000070. Accessed in 2015 (Mar 16).
Guan J, Gao X. Comparison and evaluation of Chinese research performance in the field of bioinformatics. Scientometrics. 2008;75(2):357-379. Available from: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11192-007-1871-0. Accessed in 2015 (Mar 16).
Rinia EJ, van LeeuwenThN, van Vuren HG, van Raan AFJ. Influence of interdisciplinarity on peer-review and bibliometric evaluations in physics research. Research Policy. 2001;30(3):357-361. Available from: http://www.cwts.nl/tvr/documents/avr-interdiscpeer-researchpolicy.pdf. Accessed in 2015 (Mar 16).
Fang FC, Casadevall A. Retracted science and the retraction index. Infect Immun. 2011;79(10):3855-9.
