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The effectiveness of correction & republication as quality control in scholarly communication – A bibliometric analysis
Author(s) -
Peterson Gabriel M.
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of the association for information science and technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.903
H-Index - 145
eISSN - 2330-1643
pISSN - 2330-1635
DOI - 10.1002/asi.24119
Subject(s) - citation , citation analysis , control (management) , computer science , mechanism (biology) , quality (philosophy) , bibliometrics , philosophy , library science , epistemology , artificial intelligence
The practice of correction and republication is a mechanism for identifying and updating non‐maleficent yet message‐distorting errors in the biomedical literature. Inappropriate use of anomalous literature is evinced by citation of invalidated scholarly works, and though it is known that republished versions of articles are cited more often than corrected versions, the strength of the effect of invalidation, correction, and republication has not been previously quantified. Robust analysis of 15,000+ citations to 548 articles indexed in PubMed indicates that the practice of correction and republication is a strong predictor of reduced post‐republication citation relative to controls. This bibliometric analysis shows that corrected articles are cited on average 51% less than controls overall and that the practice of correction and republication results in a fast‐acting and long‐lasting reduction in citation of flawed works by downstream researchers.