Aspects and Collaboration Patterns of Retracted Papers as Evidence of Research Misconduct in Iran and Foreign countries

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 M.Sc of Information Science and Knowledge, Faculty of Management, University of Tehran

2 Assistant Professor, Department of Information Science and Knowledge, Faculty of Management, University of Tehran

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify organizations and countries with the highest number of retracted productions, as well as to determine the upward trend or downside of the production of this type of works globally and to compare these organizations in Iran and the world in terms of the number of retracted productions, as well as the pattern of collaboration among the organizations and countries that have been published with the most retracted articles, have been reviewed.
Methodology: This research was carried out with a scientometrics approach and data collection from the Web of Science database. Excel, Hist cite, Vos viewer, and NodexL software were used to analyze the data.
Findings: The results of this study showed that the amount of production of retracted products in recent years has been increasing and Iran has not good condition due to the number of scientific products discredited (7th rank of the world). Also, some organizations such as Islamic Azad University are ranked first in terms of this type of work. Although Harvard is ranked second in terms of the total number of articles and the total number of retracted articles, it is ranked 8th among the top organizations in terms of the proportion of total retracted articles to all papers and among organizations with the most significant number of retracted articles, it’s rank is 10th.
Conclusion: In order to measure and compare organizations, only the calculation of the number of articles and the number of scientific productions is not considered an important indicator, but the calculation and comparison of the ratio of papers and retracted papers can also change their position relative to each other. Considering the relatively unfavorable situation of Iran in terms of the number of retraction, it is recommended that researchers be familiarized with exemptions from the validity of research works and that the responsible units such as the research deputy of the organizations have penalties for eliminating the credit quality of defective and of poor quality so that the name of the country as the highest ranked country does not count as the number of denied credits.

Keywords

References

منابع فارسی
پورشسب، ساناز. (1397). آسیب‌شناسی و بررسی مقالات بین‌المللی سلب‌اعتبار‌شدۀ ایرانی در پایگاه اطلاعاتی اسکوپوس، گوگل اسکولار و ریسرچ گیت بین سال‌های 1997 تا 2017. علوم و فنون مدیریت اطلاعات، 4(2)، 137-156.
رشیدیان، حمیده؛ خانجانی، نرگس و مبشر، مینا. (1393). تجربیات دانشجویان تحصیلات تکمیلی علوم پایه از سوءرفتارهای پژوهشی در زمینه انتشار نتایج پژوهش. اخلاق پزشکی، 8(28)، 71-99.
مرادی، شیما و جنوی، المیرا. (1397) . مطالعه علم‌سنجیِ مقاله‌‌های سلب‌اعتبارشده ایرانی. پردازش و مدیریت اطلاعات، 33(4)،1823-1844.
مقتدری، علی و دهمرده، مریم. (1391). تقلب و سوءرفتار در پژوهش‌‌های پزشکی. تحقیقات علوم پزشکی زاهدان، 14(1)، 1-24.
‏‫مقدم تبریزی، ناهید و ولی‌زاده زنوز، پروین. (۱۳۸۵). بررسی بهره‌وری در اقتصاد ایران. روند، 16(49)، 15-41.
منابع انگلیسی
Almeida, R. M. V. R., Rocha, K. d. A., Catelani, F., Fontes-Pereira, A. J., & Vasconcelos, S. M. R. (2016). Plagiarism Allegations Account for Most Retractions in Major Latin American/Caribbean Databases. Science and Engineering Ethics, 22(5), 1447-1456.
Bar-Ilan, J., & Halevi, G. (2017). Post retraction citations in context: a case study. Scientometrics, 113(1), 547-565.
Blanco-Mesa, F., Merigó, J. M., & Gil-Lafuente, A. M. (2017). Fuzzy decision making: A bibliometric-based review. Journal of Intelligent and Fuzzy Systems, 32(3), 2033-2050.
Bonilla, C. A., Merigó, J. M., & Torres-Abad, C. (2015). Economics in Latin America: a bibliometric analysis. Scientometrics, 105(2), 1239-1252.
Bosch, X., Hernandez, C., Pericas, J. M., Doti, P., & Marusic, A. (2012). Misconduct Policies in High-Impact Biomedical Journals. PLoS ONE, 7(12), e51928.
Broadus, R. N. (1987). Toward a definition of "bibliometrics". Scientometrics, 12(5-6), 373-379.
Casadevall, A., & Fang, F. C. (2012). Reforming Science: Methodological and Cultural Reforms. Infection and Immunity, 80(3), 891-896.
Cokol, M., Iossifov, I., Rodriguez-Esteban, R., & Rzhetsky, A. (2007). How many scientific papers should be retracted? Embo Reports, 8(5), 422-423.
Cokol, M., Ozbay, F., & Rodriguez-Esteban, R. (2008). Retraction rates are on the rise. Embo Reports, 9(1), 2-2.
Curno, M. J. (2016). Challenges to ethical publishing in the digital era. Journal of Information Communication & Ethics in Society, 14(1), 4-15.
Djalalinia, S., Owlia, P., Afzali, H. M., Ghanei, M., & Peykari, N. (2016). A Proposed Strategy for Research Misconduct Policy: A Review on Misconduct Management in Health Research System. International Journal of Preventive Medicine, 7, 5.
Emrouznejad, A., & Marra, M. (2014). Ordered weighted averaging operators 1988-2014: A citation-based literature survey. International Journal of Intelligent Systems, 29(11), 994-1014.
Fanelli, D. (2009). How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Survey Data. PLoS ONE, 4(5), e5738.
Fanelli, D. (2013). Why Growing Retractions Are (Mostly) a Good Sign. Plos Medicine, 10(12), e1001563.
Fang, F. C., Steen, R. G., & Casadevall, A. (2012). Misconduct accounts for the majority of retracted scientific publications. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 109(42), 17028-17033.
Foo, J. Y. A. (2011). A Retrospective Analysis of the Trend of Retracted Publications in the Field of Biomedical and Life Sciences. Science and Engineering Ethics, 17(3), 459-468.
George, S. L. (2016). Research misconduct and data fraud in clinical trials: prevalence and causal factors. International Journal of Clinical Oncology, 21(1), 15-21.
Grieneisen, M. L., & Zhang, M. (2012). A Comprehensive Survey of Retracted Articles from the Scholarly Literature. PLoS ONE, 7(10), e44118.
Gross, C. (2016). Scientific misconduct. Annual review of psychology, 67, 693-711.
He, T. (2013). Retraction of global scientific publications from 2001 to 2010. Scientometrics, 96(2), 555-561.
Hernandez-Linares, R., Sarkar, S., & Cobo, M. J. (2018). Inspecting the Achilles heel: a quantitative analysis of 50 years of family business definitions. Scientometrics, 115(2), 929-951.
Hicks, D., Wouters, P., Waltman, L., de Rijcke, S., & Rafols, I. (2015). Bibliometrics: The Leiden Manifesto for research metrics. Nature, 520(7548), 429-431.
Korpela, K. M. (2010). How long does it take for the scientific literature to purge itself of fraudulent material: The Breuning case revisited. Current Medical Research and Opinion, 26(4), 843-847.
Linton, J. D. (2004). Perspective: Ranking business schools on the management of technology. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 21(6), 416-430.
Liu, W., Hu, G., & Tang, L. (2018). Missing author address information in Web of Science—An explorative study. Journal of Informetrics, 12(3), 985-997.
Madlock-Brown, C. R., & Eichmann, D. (2015). The (lack of) Impact of Retraction on Citation Networks. Science and Engineering Ethics, 21(1), 127-137.
Masic, I. (2012). Plagiarism in scientific publishing. Acta Informatica Medica, 20(4), 208.
Mohan, M., Shetty, D., Shetty, T., & Pandya, K. (2015). Rising from Plagiarising. Journal of Maxillofacial & Oral Surgery, 14(3), 538-540.
Moylan, E. C., & Kowalczuk, M. K. (2016). Why articles are retracted: a retrospective cross-sectional study of retraction notices at BioMed Central. BMJ open, 6(11), e012047.
Pritchard, A. (1969). Statistical bibliography or bibliometrics? Journal of Documentation, 25(4), 348-349.
Resnik, D. B., & Dinse, G. E. (2013). Scientific retractions and corrections related to misconduct findings. Journal of Medical Ethics, 39(1), 46-50.
Samp, J. C., Schumock, G. T., & Pickard, A. S. (2012). Retracted Publications in the Drug Literature. Pharmacotherapy, 32(7), 586-595.
Sox, H. C., & Rennie, D. (2006). Research misconduct, retraction, and cleansing the medical literature: Lessons from the Poehlman case. Annals of Internal Medicine, 144(8), 609-613.
Steen, R. G. (2011a). Retractions in the medical literature: how many patients are put at risk by flawed research? Journal of Medical Ethics, 37, 688-692.
Steen, R. G. (2011b). Retractions in the scientific literature: is the incidence of research fraud increasing? Journal of Medical Ethics, 37(4), 249-253.
Steen, R. G., Casadevall, A., & Fang, F. C. (2013). Why Has the Number of Scientific Retractions Increased? PLoS ONE, 8(7), e68397.
Thielen, J. (2018). When scholarly publishing goes awry: Educating ourselves and our patrons about retracted articles. Portal, 18(1), 183-198.
Thongpapanl, N. (2012). The changing landscape of technology and innovation management: An updated ranking of journals in the field. Technovation, 32(5), 257-271.
Van Noorden, R. (2011). The trouble with retractions: A surge in withdrawn papers is highlighting weaknesses in the system for handling them. Nature, 478(7367), 26-28.
van Wesel, M. (2016). Evaluation by Citation: Trends in Publication Behavior, Evaluation Criteria, and the Strive for High Impact Publications. Science and Engineering Ethics, 22(1), 199-225.
Wager, E., & Williams, P. (2011). Why and how do journals retract articles? An analysis of Medline retractions 1988-2008. Journal of Medical Ethics, 37(9), 567-570.
Yu, D. (2015). A scientometrics review on aggregation operator research. Scientometrics, 105(1), 115-133.

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics