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A qualitative and quantitative analysis of open citations to retracted articles: the Wakefield 1998 et al.'s case

In this article, we show the results of a quantitative and qualitative analysis of open citations on a popular and highly cited retracted paper: “Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis and pervasive developmental disorder in children” by Wakefield et al., published in 1998. The mai...

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Autores principales: Heibi, Ivan, Peroni, Silvio
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer International Publishing 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8338205/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34376878
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-04097-5
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author Heibi, Ivan
Peroni, Silvio
author_facet Heibi, Ivan
Peroni, Silvio
author_sort Heibi, Ivan
collection PubMed
description In this article, we show the results of a quantitative and qualitative analysis of open citations on a popular and highly cited retracted paper: “Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis and pervasive developmental disorder in children” by Wakefield et al., published in 1998. The main purpose of our study is to understand the behavior of the publications citing one retracted article and the characteristics of the citations the retracted article accumulated over time. Our analysis is based on a methodology which illustrates how we gathered the data, extracted the topics of the citing articles and visualized the results. The data and services used are all open and free to foster the reproducibility of the analysis. The outcomes concerned the analysis of the entities citing Wakefield et al.’s article and their related in-text citations. We observed a constant increasing number of citations in the last 20 years, accompanied with a constant increment in the percentage of those acknowledging its retraction. Citing articles have started either discussing or dealing with the retraction of Wakefield et al.’s article even before its full retraction happened in 2010. Articles in the social sciences domain citing the Wakefield et al.’s one were among those that have mostly discussed its retraction. In addition, when observing the in-text citations, we noticed that a large number of the citations received by Wakefield et al.’s article has focused on general discussions without recalling strictly medical details, especially after the full retraction. Medical studies did not hesitate in acknowledging the retraction of the Wakefield et al.’s article and often provided strong negative statements on it.
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spelling pubmed-83382052021-08-06 A qualitative and quantitative analysis of open citations to retracted articles: the Wakefield 1998 et al.'s case Heibi, Ivan Peroni, Silvio Scientometrics Article In this article, we show the results of a quantitative and qualitative analysis of open citations on a popular and highly cited retracted paper: “Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis and pervasive developmental disorder in children” by Wakefield et al., published in 1998. The main purpose of our study is to understand the behavior of the publications citing one retracted article and the characteristics of the citations the retracted article accumulated over time. Our analysis is based on a methodology which illustrates how we gathered the data, extracted the topics of the citing articles and visualized the results. The data and services used are all open and free to foster the reproducibility of the analysis. The outcomes concerned the analysis of the entities citing Wakefield et al.’s article and their related in-text citations. We observed a constant increasing number of citations in the last 20 years, accompanied with a constant increment in the percentage of those acknowledging its retraction. Citing articles have started either discussing or dealing with the retraction of Wakefield et al.’s article even before its full retraction happened in 2010. Articles in the social sciences domain citing the Wakefield et al.’s one were among those that have mostly discussed its retraction. In addition, when observing the in-text citations, we noticed that a large number of the citations received by Wakefield et al.’s article has focused on general discussions without recalling strictly medical details, especially after the full retraction. Medical studies did not hesitate in acknowledging the retraction of the Wakefield et al.’s article and often provided strong negative statements on it. Springer International Publishing 2021-08-05 2021 /pmc/articles/PMC8338205/ /pubmed/34376878 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-04097-5 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Heibi, Ivan
Peroni, Silvio
A qualitative and quantitative analysis of open citations to retracted articles: the Wakefield 1998 et al.'s case
title A qualitative and quantitative analysis of open citations to retracted articles: the Wakefield 1998 et al.'s case
title_full A qualitative and quantitative analysis of open citations to retracted articles: the Wakefield 1998 et al.'s case
title_fullStr A qualitative and quantitative analysis of open citations to retracted articles: the Wakefield 1998 et al.'s case
title_full_unstemmed A qualitative and quantitative analysis of open citations to retracted articles: the Wakefield 1998 et al.'s case
title_short A qualitative and quantitative analysis of open citations to retracted articles: the Wakefield 1998 et al.'s case
title_sort qualitative and quantitative analysis of open citations to retracted articles: the wakefield 1998 et al.'s case
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8338205/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34376878
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-04097-5
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