Retracted Research Articles and Research Integrity
[Posted on: Thursday, 05 May , 2016]

We hear occasionally about research articles that have been retracted due to faulty data or fraud. However, we seldom hear about overall impact of retracted articles. First, a given article may stay in publications for some time before it is retracted during which time it may be cited by others. Even after retraction of the article at fault, the all the other articles that cited it are not and may not be retracted casting a shadow on the second tier articles. For example it was found that an article retracted from the journal Nature had been cited by 57 articles which in turn were cited by 1626 papers. So, does it mean that all those secondary and tertiary articles were also tainted? Second, even though an article may have been officially retracted by a journal, it may still stay alive online and may be cited inadvertently by others. A survey found that both these issues with retracted articles did not affect the reliability of the progeny articles for many reasons. First, the progeny articles most likely relied on multiple references so the affect of one faulty article will he highly diluted to have a significant impact. The dilution of impact is further increased in second and third tier articles. Second, there are two kinds of faulty articles, those that are fraud and those that contain honest mistakes in interpretation of results. The first kind is more infrequent and hence their impact is more controlled. The second kind occasionally is correct by subsequent users of the information. Overall, these are serious issues that need to be addressed but their impact on subsequent articles is minimum at best. So next time you hear about a retracted article, rest assured as long as you stay away from a retracted article, your research will be fine. One rule to citation, before citing, make sure to check if the article has been retracted.