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Team size and retracted citations reveal the patterns of retractions from 1981 to 2020

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Abstract

The growth of the retraction databases reveals the disturbing trend in science and also the rising trend of citations of retracted papers is a serious concern. The objective of the study is to investigate the patterns of retractions through the team size and retracted citations. The publication records of 12,231 retracted papers indexed by Web of Science (WoS) are analyzed to investigate (i) the patterns of retraction associated with collaboration and team size; and (ii) the impact of retracted papers on the papers that are citing the retracted papers (retracted citations). The study demonstrates the collaboration patterns of retracted publications where 61.5% of authors have only one and 24.6% have two retracted papers; however, 2% of authors have more than retracted papers. Also, the temporal evolution of the team size reveals that teams smaller in size have more retractions. The impact of citing retracted papers reveals that 55.2% of retracted papers have been cited at least once. 1/4th of the citations to the retracted papers are self-citations which themselves are retractions. On average 71.4% citations are the non-retracted citations and 28.6% citations are retracted citations which are mostly the self-citations. Last, the variation in average team size and average retracted citations in various research areas (having high retraction) is presented. Retracted publications in high-impact journals are highly cited.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions. I am thankful to Parul Khurana (LPU) for his help in data extraction and Prof. A. Chakraborti (JNU) for feedback. WoS data has been downloaded from the Northwestern University, USA.

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  1. School of Engineering and Technology, BML Munjal University, Gurugram, Haryana, 122413, India

    Kiran Sharma

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  1. Kiran Sharma
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Correspondence to Kiran Sharma.

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Sharma, K. Team size and retracted citations reveal the patterns of retractions from 1981 to 2020. Scientometrics 126, 8363–8374 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-04125-4

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