Citation

Lu SF, Jin GZ, Uzzi B, Jones B. Sci. Rep. 2013; 3: 3146.

Affiliation

Simon School of Business, University of Rochester.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2013, Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1038/srep03146

PMID

24192909

Abstract

Scientific articles are retracted at increasing rates, with the highest rates among top journals. Here we show that a single retraction triggers citation losses through an author's prior body of work. Compared to closely-matched control papers, citations fall by an average of 6.9% per year for each prior publication. These chain reactions are sustained on authors' papers (a) published up to a decade earlier and (b) connected within the authors' own citation network by up to 4 degrees of separation from the retracted publication. Importantly, however, citation losses among prior work disappear when authors self-report the error. Our analyses and results span the range of scientific disciplines.

Language: en