Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

April 30, 2015

What Should Remain After Retraction?

Filed under: Archives,Citation Practices,Preservation — Patrick Durusau @ 3:39 pm

Antony Williams asks in a tweet:

If a paper is retracted shouldn’t it remain up but watermarked PDF as retracted? More than this? http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja910615z

Here is what you get instead of the front page:

jacs-retraction

A retraction should appear in bibliographic records maintained by the publisher as well as on any online version maintained by the publisher.

The Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS) method of retraction, removal of the retracted content:

  • Presents a false view of the then current scientific context. Prior to retraction such an article is part of the overall scientific context in a field. Editing that context post-publication, is historical revisionism at its worst.
  • Interrupts the citation chain of publications cited in the retracted publication.
  • Leaves dangling citations of the retracted publication in later publications.
  • Places author who cited the retracted publication in an untenable position. Their citations of a retracted work are suspect with no opportunity to defend their citations.
  • Falsifies the memories of every reader who read the retracted publication. They cannot search for and retrieve that paper in order to revisit an idea, process or result sparked by the retracted publication.

Sound off to: Antony Williams (@ChemConnector) and @RetractionWatch

Let’s leave the creation of false histories to professionals, such as politicians.

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