[Excerpts are taken from two articles, “The Unfortunately Long Life of Some Retracted Biomedical Research Publications”, by James M. Hagberg, published in the Journal of Applied Physiology; and “Inflated citations and metrics of journals discontinued from Scopus for publication concerns: the GhoS(t)copus Project”, by Andrea Cortegiani et al., posted at BioArXiv]

The Unfortunately Long Life of Some Retracted Biomedical Research Publications

“In 2005 the scientific misconduct case of a noted researcher concluded with, among other things, the retraction of 10 papers. However, these articles continue to be cited at relatively high rates.”

“While it initially appears there was a relative “cleansing”, as citation rates for these articles did decrease after retraction, the reductions in citation rates for these articles (-28%) were the same as those for matched non-retracted publications both by the same author (-28%) and by another investigator (-29%) over the same time frame.”

To read the article, click here. (NOTE: Article is behind a paywall.)

Inflated citations and metrics of journals discontinued from Scopus for publication concerns: the GhoS(t)copus Project

“The journals included in Scopus are periodically re-evaluated to ensure they meet indexing criteria. Afterwards, some journals might be discontinued for publication concerns. Despite their discontinuation, previously published articles remain indexed and continue to be cited.”

“This study aimed (1) to evaluate the main features and citation metrics of journals discontinued from Scopus for publication concerns, before and after discontinuation, and (2) to determine the extent of predatory journals among the discontinued journals.”

“A total of 317 journals were evaluated. The mean number of citations per year after discontinuation was significantly higher than before (median of difference 64 citations, p<0.0001), and so was the number of citations per document (median of difference 0.4 citations, p<0.0001).”

“Twenty-two percent (72/317) of the journals were included in the Cabell blacklist.”

To read the article, click here.