ArticleBMJ global health2020
Does retraction after misconduct have an impact on citations? A pre-post study.
Article in BMJ global health, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed.
- Retraction and correction of scientific articles due to conflicts of interest: a cross‑sectional analysis of the Retraction Watch database.Research integrity and peer review · 2026Article
- Retracted Randomized Clinical Trials From Superretractors and Top-Cited Scientists With Multiple Retractions.JAMA network open · 2026Article
- How the National Library of Medicine should evolve in an era of artificial intelligence.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2025Article
- Investigating the impact of trial retractions on the healthcare evidence ecosystem (VITALITY Study I): retrospective cohort study.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2025Article
- Characteristics of retracted biomedical research papers from Latin American institutions.Revista de saude publica · 2025Article
- How to fight fake papers: a review on important information sources and steps towards solution of the problem.Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archives of pharmacology · 2024Review
- The trend and ripple effects of retractions in primary health care: A bibliometric analysis.Journal of the Chinese Medical Association : JCMA · 2024Article
- Metadata analysis of retracted fake papers in Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's Archives of Pharmacology.Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archives of pharmacology · 2024Article
- Is biomedical research self-correcting? Modelling insights on the persistence of spurious science.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Inaccuracy in the Scientific Record and Open Postpublication Critique.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2023Article
- Citation of updated and co-published Cochrane Methodology Reviews.Systematic reviews · 2023Article
- Reducing Health Misinformation in Science: A Call to Arms.The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science · 2022Article
- Bibliometric and Altmetric Analysis of Retracted Articles on COVID-19.Journal of Korean medical science · 2022Article
- Continued use of retracted papers: Temporal trends in citations and (lack of) awareness of retractions shown in citation contexts in biomedicine.Quantitative science studies · 2022Article
- Article
- Novel biomedical research must not be a work of fiction.The Journal of clinical investigation · 2021Article
- Trends and Characteristics of Retracted Articles in the Smoking Field: An Observational Study.Open respiratory archivesArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundRetracted articles continue to be cited after retraction, and this could have consequences for the scientific community and general population alike. This study was conducted to analyse the association of retraction on citations received by retracted papers due to misconduct using two-time frames: during a postretraction period equivalent to the time the article had been in print before retraction; and during the total postretraction period.
methodsQuasiexperimental, pre-post evaluation study. A total of 304 retracted original articles and literature reviews indexed in MEDLINE fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Articles were required to have been published in a journal indexed in MEDLINE from January 2013 through December 2015 and been retracted between January 2014 and December 2016. The main outcome was the number of citations received before and after retraction. Results were broken down by journal quartile according to impact factor and the most cited papers during the preretraction period were specifically analysed.
resultsThere was an increase in postretraction citations when compared with citations received preretraction. There were some exceptions however: first, citations received by articles published in first-quartile journals decreased immediately after retraction (p<0.05), only to increase again after some time had elapsed; and second, postretraction citations decreased significantly in the case of articles that had received many citations before their retraction (p<0.05).
conclusionsThe results indicate that retraction of articles has no association on citations in the long term, since the retracted articles continue to be cited, thus circumventing their retraction.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.