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Cloud-Based Phrase Mining and Analysis of User-Defined Phrase-Category Association in Biomedical Publications
Published on: February 23, 2019
Retraction of publications: a study of biomedical journals retracting publications based on impact factor and journal
Isabel Campos-Varela1, Ramón Villaverde-Castañeda2, Alberto Ruano-Raviña3
1University of Santiago de Compostela (CLINURSID), Santiago de Compostela, Spain; Department of Internal Medicine, Hospital of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
Objective:
To describe the biomedical journal characteristics that are associated with the retraction of papers.
Method:
A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted. All papers retracted and indexed in PubMed from January 1st 2013 to December 31st, 2016 were included. We used nine main categories to classify retractions: aspects related with data, authors issues, plagiarism, unethical research, journal issues, review process, conflict of interest, other, and unknown. These categories were further classified as: misconduct, suspicion of misconduct, or no misconduct.
Results:
The proportion of retraction was 2.5 per 10,000 publications. Retractions appeared in 611 journals. During the study period, retraction due to misconduct was more frequent among journals with low-impact factor. Within these retracted publications, among low-impact journals the presence of misconduct was higher with a 73% compared to 61% for the high-impact journals (p=0.001). There were differences in the percentage of retractions due to misconduct regarding the journal classification category (p<0.001).
Conclusions:
Retraction of publications is present in both high- and low-impact factor biomedical journals, but misconduct is more frequent among the papers retracted from lower impact journals. Measures before and after publication should be taken to limit misconduct.
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