The Retraction Penalty: Evidence from the Web of Science

Susan Feng Lu; Ginger Zhe Jin; Brian Uzzi; Benjamin Jones

doi:10.1038/srep03146

The Retraction Penalty: Evidence from the Web of Science

Susan Feng Lu, Ginger Zhe Jin, Brian Uzzi, Benjamin Jones^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

127 Scopus citations

Abstract

Scientific articles are retracted at increasing rates, with the highest rates among top journals. Here we show that a single retraction triggers citation losses through an author's prior body of work. Compared to closely-matched control papers, citations fall by an average of 6.9% per year for each prior publication. These chain reactions are sustained on authors' papers (a) published up to a decade earlier and (b) connected within the authors' own citation network by up to 4 degrees of separation from the retracted publication. Importantly, however, citation losses among prior work disappear when authors self-report the error. Our analyses and results span the range of scientific disciplines.

Original language	English (US)
Article number	3146
Journal	Scientific reports
Volume	3
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/srep03146
State	Published - Nov 6 2013

Funding

We thank Alex Entz, Yiyan Liu, Ben Zou, Huan Meng, Ari Bellen, and Marat Davletshin for research assistance. Funding was provided by the University of Maryland, the Northwestern University Institute on Complex Systems (NICO), the Army Research Laboratory (under cooperative agreement W911NF-09-2-0053 to B.U.) and DARPA BAA-11-64, Social Media in Strategic Communication. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the Army Research Laboratory or the U.S. Government.

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title = "The Retraction Penalty: Evidence from the Web of Science",

abstract = "Scientific articles are retracted at increasing rates, with the highest rates among top journals. Here we show that a single retraction triggers citation losses through an author's prior body of work. Compared to closely-matched control papers, citations fall by an average of 6.9% per year for each prior publication. These chain reactions are sustained on authors' papers (a) published up to a decade earlier and (b) connected within the authors' own citation network by up to 4 degrees of separation from the retracted publication. Importantly, however, citation losses among prior work disappear when authors self-report the error. Our analyses and results span the range of scientific disciplines.",

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The Retraction Penalty: Evidence from the Web of Science

Abstract

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