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Cited by 35Academic integrity and plagiarismscientometrics and bibliometrics researchAcademic Publishing and Open Access

Inappropriate Citation of Retracted Articles in Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine Publications

De Cassai, Alessandro, Geraldini, Federico, De Pinto, Silvia, Carbonari, Ilaria, Cascella, Marco, Boscolo, Annalisa, Sella, Nicolò, Monteleone, Francesco +4 more·2022·Anesthesiology
DOI 10.1097/aln.0000000000004302
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Abstract

Background: Retracted articles represent research withdrawn from the existing body of literature after publication. Research articles may be retracted for several reasons ranging from honest errors to intentional misconduct. They should not be used as reliable sources, and it is unclear why they are cited occasionally by other articles. This study hypothesized that several mechanisms may contribute to citing retracted literature and aimed to analyze the characteristics of articles citing retracted literature in anesthesiology and critical care. Methods: Using the Retraction Watch database, we retrieved retracted articles on anesthesiology and intensive care medicine up to August 16, 2021, and identified the papers citing these retracted articles. A survey designed to investigate the reasons for citing these articles was sent to the corresponding authors of the citing papers. Results: We identified 478 retracted articles, 220 (46%) of which were cited at least once. We contacted 1297 corresponding authors of the papers that cited these articles, 417 (30%) of whom responded to our survey and were included in the final analysis. The median number of authors in the analyzed articles was five, and the median elapsed time from retraction to citation was 3 yr. Most of the corresponding authors (372, 89%) were unaware of the retracted status of the cited article, mainly because of inadequate notification of the retraction status in journals and/or databases and the use of stored copies. Conclusions: The corresponding authors were generally unaware of the retraction of the cited article, usually because of inadequate identification of the retracted status in journals and/or web databases and the use of stored copies. Awareness of this phenomenon and rigorous control of the cited references before submitting a paper are of fundamental importance in research. Editor’s Perspective: What We Already Know about This Topic: What This Article Tells Us That Is New:

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1097/aln.0000000000004302

Cites

17 of 17 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • The points about retracted article afterlife and management are not article-, journal-, or field-specific and have broader relevance for how scholarly journals manage retraction processes and address continued citation of retracted articles.

    “While these examples are drawn from one journal, the points we make are not article-, journal-, or field-specific. Rather, they have broader relevance for how scholarly journals manage retraction processes and work to address continued citation of retracted articles.8”

    From Why retracted articles can have an influential afterlife—and what to do about it (2026) · cites this paper as [8]

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Authors
De Cassai, A., Geraldini, F., De Pinto, S., Carbonari, I., Cascella, M., Boscolo, A., Sella, N., Monteleone, F., Cavaliere, F., Munari, M., Garofalo, E., & Navalesi, P.
Affiliations
  • Institute of Anesthesia and Intensive Care Unit, University Hospital of Padua, Padua, Italy.
  • Azienda Ospedale - Università Padova (IT)
  • Department of Medicine, University of Padua, Padua, Italy.
  • University of Padua (IT)
  • Istituto Nazionale Tumori IRCCS "Fondazione G. Pascale" (IT)
  • Magna Graecia University (IT)
Corresponding author
Garofalo, Eugenio
ORCID
Venue
Anesthesiology
Publisher
Ovid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health)
Published
2022-07-05
Volume
137
Issue
3
Pages
341-350
ISSN
  • 0003-3022 (ISSN-L)
  • 1528-1175
DOI
10.1097/aln.0000000000004302
OpenAlex
W4283824548
Cited by
34
References
17
Citations by year
2026: 7 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 2
FWCI
7.83
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
  • Anesthesiology (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Padua Research Archive (University of Padova) (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Safety Research › Academic integrity and plagiarism
  • Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › scientometrics and bibliometrics research
  • Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Academic Publishing and Open Access
Keywords
retracted article, corresponding authors, intensive care medicine, research misconduct, reference checking, Retraction Watch
MeSH terms
Anesthesiology, Bibliographies as Topic, Critical Care, Humans, Periodicals as Topic, Publications, Retraction of Publication as Topic, Scientific Misconduct, Biomedical Research

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

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