bims-librar Biomed News
on Biomedical Librarianship
Issue of 2018‒03‒18
three papers selected by
Thomas Krichel
Open Library Society


  1. Prev Med. 2018 May;pii: S0091-7435(18)30062-8. [Epub ahead of print]110 114-115
      
    Keywords:  Corrigendum; Editorial decisions; Peer review; Retractions
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2018.02.027
  2. Surgery. 2018 Mar 08. pii: S0039-6060(18)30031-X. [Epub ahead of print]
      BACKGROUND: Retraction of previously published scientific articles is an important mechanism to preserve the integrity of scientific work. This study analyzed retractions of previously published articles from surgery journals.METHODS: We searched for retracted articles in the 100 surgery journals with the highest SJR2 indicator grades.
    RESULTS: We found 130 retracted articles in 49 journals (49%). Five or more retracted articles were published in 8 journals (8%). The mean time between publication and retraction was 26 months (range 1 to 158 months). The United States, China, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom accounted for more than 3 out of 4 of the retracted articles. The greatest number of retractions came from manuscripts about orthopedics and traumatology, general surgery, anesthesiology, cardiothoracic surgery, and plastic surgery. Nonsurgeons were responsible for 16% of retractions in these surgery journals. The main reasons for retraction were duplicate publication (42%), plagiarism (16%), absence of proven integrity of the study (14%), incorrect data (13%), data published without authorization (12%), violation of research ethics (11%), documented fraud (11%), request of an author(s) (5%), and unknown (3%). In 25% of the retracted articles, other publications by the same authors also had been retracted.
    CONCLUSION: Retraction of published articles does not occur frequently in surgery journals. Some form of scientific misconduct was present in the majority of retractions, especially duplication of publication and plagiarism. Retractions of previously published articles were most frequent from countries with the greatest number of publications; some authors showed recidivism.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.surg.2018.01.015
  3. Infez Med. 2018 Mar 01. 26(1): 28-36
      Carrion's disease is a major re-emerging and occupational health disease. This bibliometric study aimed to evaluate scientific production on this disease both globally and in Latin America. SCI-E, MEDLINE/GoPubMed, SCOPUS, ScIELO, and LILACS databases were searched for Carrion's disease-related articles. They were classified according to publication year, type, city and institution of origin, international cooperation, scientific journal, impact factor, publication language, author(s), and H-index. There were 170 articles in SCI-E. The USA was the largest contributor (42.9%), followed by Peru (24.1%) and Spain (12.4%). Latin American publications were cited 811 times (regional H-index=18). There were 335 articles in SCOPUS: 25.9%, 11.6%, and 8.3% were published by the USA, Peru, and Spain, respectively. Latin American publications were cited 613 times (H-index=12): Peru, Colombia, and Brazil received the most citations (n=395, H-index=10; n=61, H-index=1; and n=54, H-index=4, respectively). The most scientifically productive American institution was the University of Montana (2.9% of American production). In Peru, it was the Institute of Tropical Medicine Alexander von Humboldt of Peruvian University Cayetano Heredia (6.5% of Peruvian scientific production). There were 3,802 articles in Medline (1.2% were Peruvian), 35 in SciELO (94.3% were from Peru), and 168 in LILACS (11% were published in 2010-2014; only one article was published in 2015). Scientific production worldwide is led by the USA, and, in Latin America, by Peru and Brazil. However, Latin American scientific production in bibliographic databases is much lower than in other regions, despite being an endemic area for Carrion's disease.