Abstract
To determine the accessibility of retracted articles residing on non-publisher websites and in personal libraries. Searches were performed to locate Internet copies of 1,779 retracted articles identified in MEDLINE, published between 1973 and 2010, excluding the publishers' website. Found copies were classified by article version and location. Mendeley (a bibliographic software) was searched for copies residing in personal libraries. Non-publisher websites provided 321 publicly accessible copies for 289 retracted articles: 304 (95%) copies were the publisher' versions, and 13 (4%) were final manuscripts. PubMed Central had 138 (43%) copies; educational websites 94 (29%); commercial websites 24 (7%); advocacy websites 16 (5%); and institutional repositories 10 (3%). Just 16 [corrected] (5%) full-article views included a retraction statement. Personal Mendeley libraries contained records for 1,340 (75%) retracted articles, shared by 3.4 users, on average. The benefits of decentralized access to scientific articles may come with the cost of promoting incorrect, invalid, or untrustworthy science. Automated methods to deliver status updates to readers may reduce the persistence of error in the scientific literature.
Highlights
A retraction notice is issued to alert readers when a published study is no longer scientifically valid or trustworthy
Retracted articles continue to be cited as valid studies for years after retraction notices have been issued [1,2,3]
While there is evidence that articles receive fewer citations after retraction compared to a control group [4, 5] or in high-profile cases exposing extensive research fraud [6], highly cited articles continue to be frequently cited after retraction [2]
Summary
A retraction notice is issued to alert readers when a published study is no longer scientifically valid or trustworthy. Reaching readers long after the original article was published remains a chronic problem. There is little evidence that retraction notices make much difference to the citation behavior of authors. Retracted articles continue to be cited as valid studies for years after retraction notices have been issued [1,2,3]. While there is evidence that articles receive fewer citations after retraction compared to a control group [4, 5] or in high-profile cases exposing extensive research fraud [6], highly cited articles continue to be frequently cited after retraction [2]. If science is a self-correcting process [8, 9], the persistence of error in the literature reflects a chronically slow and inefficient process
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