Identifying Barriers to Citing Retracted Literature

Objectives: Recognizing that a paper has been retracted can be challenging due to differing indexing practices of journal publishers and citation databases, and a lack of guidance on citing retractions by citation styles. The purpose of this study is to document the retraction policies of various information providers and to highlight barriers to accurately citing retracted literature

Methods: We investigated the indexing policies of 50 journals that contain retracted publications. A search for the publication type “Retracted article” was conducted in PubMed on Oct. 20, 2019 and we limited to articles published in English since 2009. The 50 journals that contained the most retracted articles were chosen for analysis. The various journal publishers’ indexing practices for identifying retracted articles were documented in a table. Additionally, we investigated the current retraction policies of major citation databases that cover biomedical literature. If policies were not available online, the database companies were contacted directly. Finally, we identified commonly used citation styles and investigated their guidelines for documenting and citing retracted articles.

Results: Journals used a variety of methods for reporting a retracted article’s status. Of the 7 recommendations made by the ICMJE for reporting retracted publications, less than half (70 of 150) of the articles followed all recommendations. Journals were not consistent in labeling articles as retracted when reviewing three sample articles from the same journal. PubMed and Ovid MEDLINE showed the overall best performance in documenting retracted publications. When looking at the same publication in other databases, there were significant differences in how the retracted status appears.
The AMA, APA and NLM/Vancouver writing style guides include instructions for citing retracted literature.


Conclusions: Barriers to citing retracted literature exist in part due to the journals and databases that make this information hard to find. There are inconsistencies in the ways that retracted articles are labeled on journal websites and citation databases. While style guides provide guidance on how to cite retracted publications, authors may not be aware of the requirements from each writing style guide, and citation software does not automatically add this information to the citations. Librarians should raise concerns with database vendors on the poor performance of reporting retracted publications, and should educate users on proper citing behavior.