Continued Use of Retracted Publications: Implications for Information Systems and Scientific Publishing

Reports on the preliminary results of an empirical study of post-retraction citations of biomedical research literature. Retractions of biomedical publications have a serious impact on research enterprise and public health. Retractions to correct literature and alert readers are actions by the journals based on evidence of serious flaws or errors or upon the request of the authors. The process of retraction could take a few weeks or years after publication. The purpose of this study is to investigate how retracted peer-reviewed journal articles were cited post-retraction. Post-retraction citing articles are those published two years after the retraction year. The dataset includes 961 post-retraction citing articles that cited one or more of 77 retracted articles. The 77 retracted articles were also recommended by experts in a literature recommendation database (Faculty Opinions). The findings show that a higher percentage of the continued use of the retracted articles made no mention of the retraction or invalid results in these articles. Retracted articles and their retraction notices need to be open access; entities involved in publishing and providing literature resources must practice diligence in ensuring the validity of scientific literature