An analysis of retracted papers in Computer Science.
Journal
PloS one
ISSN: 1932-6203
Titre abrégé: PLoS One
Pays: United States
ID NLM: 101285081
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
2023
2023
Historique:
received:
15
06
2022
accepted:
23
02
2023
medline:
11
5
2023
pubmed:
9
5
2023
entrez:
9
5
2023
Statut:
epublish
Résumé
The retraction of research papers, for whatever reason, is a growing phenomenon. However, although retracted paper information is publicly available via publishers, it is somewhat distributed and inconsistent. The aim is to assess: (i) the extent and nature of retracted research in Computer Science (CS) (ii) the post-retraction citation behaviour of retracted works and (iii) the potential impact upon systematic reviews and mapping studies. We analyse the Retraction Watch database and take citation information from the Web of Science and Google scholar. We find that of the 33,955 entries in the Retraction watch database (16 May 2022), 2,816 are classified as CS, i.e., ≈ 8%. For CS, 56% of retracted papers provide little or no information as to the reasons. This contrasts with 26% for other disciplines. There is also some disparity between different publishers, a tendency for multiple versions of a retracted paper to be available beyond the Version of Record (VoR), and for new citations long after a paper is officially retracted (median = 3; maximum = 18). Systematic reviews are also impacted with ≈ 30% of the retracted papers having one or more citations from a review. Unfortunately, retraction seems to be a sufficiently common outcome for a scientific paper that we as a research community need to take it more seriously, e.g., standardising procedures and taxonomies across publishers and the provision of appropriate research tools. Finally, we recommend particular caution when undertaking secondary analyses and meta-analyses which are at risk of becoming contaminated by these problem primary studies.
Identifiants
pubmed: 37159472
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0285383
pii: PONE-D-22-17180
pmc: PMC10168558
doi:
Substances chimiques
Contrast Media
0
Types de publication
Journal Article
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
e0285383Informations de copyright
Copyright: © 2023 Shepperd, Yousefi. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
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