Our journal has recently retracted three articles after one author was found by their institution to have fabricated data and destroyed evidence. It appears that the one author acted alone; no evidence has been found of complicity by coauthors, and the institution found some evidence suggesting that the one author defrauded their coauthors. We would like to know whether future articles can cite retracted articles for contributions such as theory or design, as long as the contributions do not depend on the data or results.
This query is complicated because the associate editor of the journal is one of the (presumably innocent) coauthors. They have asked whether a manuscript that they are handling can cite some of the associate editor’s coauthored, retracted work. It appears the authors of the submitted manuscript included these citations in their work before the cited articles were retracted, and without prompting by the associate editor.
Question for COPE Council
- How would COPE Council advise the journal handles this situation?
Advice on this case is from a small number of COPE Council Members. Most cases on the COPE website are presented to the COPE Forum where advice is offered by a wider group of COPE Members and COPE Council Members. Advice on individual cases is not formal COPE guidance.
There are a number of issues here. Firstly, the authors have submitted a manuscript and the associate editor has noticed that one of the references (which they happen to be an author on) has since been retracted. They are presumably asking whether a paper citing a retracted paper is to be considered sound? We think this should be a question for the peer reviewers. Perhaps, as a responsible editor, they should point out to the reviewers that one of the references has been retracted. The reviewers could then decide whether this was a key reference supporting the crux of the current paper or whether it was merely something that could be deleted or replaced with something more suitable. For example, if the theory derived from the data in the retracted article, and those data have been compromised, then the theory is also compromised. If the method was entirely novel to the retracted experiment, then there is no way to base any expectation of outcome on the retracted paper because the data are compromised. Alternatively, you could advise the authors to seek out other sources or even get in touch with the previous coauthors in order to cite this as a personal communication rather than linking it back to a retracted article.
However, there is a conflict of interest with a handling editor having a relationship with a manuscript they are overseeing. There can be the perception that they have an interest in keeping the retracted paper alive, as it were, so we would strongly recommend that the task be reassigned to someone unconnected to the paper (or the papers that wish to cite it).
The fact that the coauthors did not participate in the malpractice has no bearing on the retraction, whose sole purpose is not punishment (contrary to popular belief) but rather to remove from the literature a paper whose conclusions cannot be relied on due to (in this case) malpractice. If other aspects of the paper were novel and worthy of citing, independently of the aspects contaminated by the fabrication, then perhaps they can be submitted elsewhere because, in theory, the paper does not exist in its entirety.
On the somewhat more philosophical question of whether a retracted paper should ever be cited, there may be legitimate cases where one would want to cite a retracted article. It comes down to why you cite something; as a way of noting something that happened previously, would be fine. If writing a paper about retractions, for example, one might quite reasonably want to cite some key retracted papers to illustrate the issues involved. However, it is very important to mark the paper as retracted in the reference section so this is clearly marked for readers (eg, Author AB, et al. RETRACTED: Title of article. Journal name. 2015, 100: 1-7.)