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 retracted articles and the characteristics of the citations the retracted articles 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 part 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 and often provided strong negative statements on it.
翻译:在本篇文章中,我们展示了由Wakefield等人于1998年出版的关于公开引用受欢迎和大量引用的论文的定量和定性分析结果,该论文是:Wakefield 等人于1998年出版的,对公开引用的公开引用进行了定量和定性分析,该论文是:“显性淋巴杆杆杆腺炎、非特定科炎、儿童普遍发育障碍”的。 我们研究的主要目的是了解引用被撤回文章的出版物的行为和引用被长期积累的文章的特征。我们的分析基于一种方法,该方法说明我们如何收集数据,提取引用文章的主题,并直视结果。使用的数据和服务往往都是开放和自由的,以促进分析的可再现性。结果涉及援引Wakefield 等人的文章及其相关文字引用实体的分析。我们发现,过去20年来,引用这些出版物的次数不断增加,同时承认被撤回的文章的百分比不断上升。引用的文章开始讨论或处理Wakefield 等人的文章,甚至在其全部反悔之前,2010年,在社会科学领域的文章中,没有进行严格的反悔论述,在大反悔研究之后,我们又再次阅读这些文章。