When a paper is retracted by a journal, that understandably tends to negatively impact perceptions of the researcher and the quality of their research (see here). However, these 'zombie' papers can maintain an undead existence for some time, continuing to be cited and used, sometimes uncritically, because retractions take time and because publishers are not good at highlighting when an article has been retracted. They may even continue to accrue further citations even after being retracted. In terms of understanding the effect of retractions on the research system, a key question is: how long does it take for a paper to be retracted?
That is essentially the question that this new article by Marc Joëts (University of Lille) and Valérie Mignon (University of Paris Nanterre), published in the journal Research Policy (open access), addresses. Joëts and Mignon draw on a sample of 25,480 retracted research articles over the period from 1923-2023 (taken from the Retraction Watch database), and look at the factors associated with the time to retraction (that is, the time between first publication and when the article is retracted). First, they find that:
...the average time to retraction is approximately 1045 days (nearly 3 years), but there is significant variability, with a standard deviation of 1225 days... However, some extreme cases take much longer, with the longest retraction occurring 81 years after publication.
Joëts and Mignon use several different forms of survival model to evaluate the relationship between the characteristics of an article and the time to retraction. In this analysis, they find that:
Papers in biomedical and life sciences are generally retracted faster than those in social sciences and humanities, and articles published by predatory publishers are withdrawn more promptly than those from reputable journals. Collaboration intensity and type of misconduct also emerge as significant predictors of retraction delays.
The result for predatory journals seems somewhat surprising. However, Joëts and Mignon suggest that:
...predatory journals often publish papers with evident deficiencies that are more easily detectable by external parties, such as watchdog organizations or institutions, leading to quicker retractions when misconduct is identified. Additionally, the lack of formal editorial procedures in predatory journals may result in a less structured and faster retraction process...
Of course, a faster time to retraction doesn't make predatory journals good. It simply makes them less bad, since they almost certainly are a large source of low-quality research that deserves retraction (Joëts and Mignon don't report the proportion of retractions that come from predatory journals).
In terms of collaboration intensity, articles with more co-authors take longer to retract, presumably because more people are involved in the retraction process, or because disputes over who is to blame may take some time to resolve. For types of misconduct, retractions due to 'data issues' take the longest to occur, while those for 'peer review errors' and 'referencing problems' take the least. That likely reflects that it takes some time for data analyses to be replicated and for problems to surface, whereas problems with referencing are more likely to be readily apparent from a simple reading of the article.
Joëts and Mignon also do a lot of modelling of different editorial policy changes and their effects on the distribution of times to retraction, but I don't think we can read too much into that part of the article, as the results are mostly driven by the assumptions on how the policies affect retractions. Nevertheless, this paper provides some insight into why zombie papers can keep shambling through the literature: retractions are slow and the time to retraction depends on discipline, publisher type, collaboration, and the kind of misconduct involved.
Read more:
No comments:
Post a Comment