A scientometric study of retracted publications

What is it about?

Did retracted articles get cited after their retractions? How long would it take on average to find a publication get retracted? Are there many retracted articles? What roles are played by retracted articles in the contemporary literature? What types of research fields tend to be associated with retracted papers? We conducted a visual analytic study to address these questions. For example, we found that it is much more likely to find retracted papers in a fast-moving research field than a relatively slowly moving one.

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Why is it important?

Scientometric studies overwhelmingly focus on scholarly publications as if once they are published, they will stay forever. On the other hand, studies on retracted publications mostly focused on the past that led to the point of their retractions but much less on their remaining impacts after their retraction. In this study, we introduced a few visual analytic methods that can enhance the quality and the depth of our understanding of issues surrounded retraction.