Libkey Discovery Tools: Retracted Articles

Article retractions are typically issued when there are flaws or errors in the research, ethical concerns such as research misconduct or plagiarism, or when the results of the study cannot be trusted due to data manipulation or fabrication.

In addition to quick access to material, users of BrowZine and LibKey are informed of an article’s retracted status when they view it in BrowZine, when they find it in library services like databases and discovery platforms, or when the article is found searching open websites like PubMed and Wikipedia.

When Libkey detects a retracted article, you will see a retraction notice similar to the notice below. Links to access the article are present beneath the retraction details, should you still wish to proceed to viewing the article.

Where does the retraction information come from?

Article retraction data is furnished by RetractionWatch.com who tracks, classifies and reports on scholarly article retractions.

What can I expect to see in the retraction notice?

Depending on the article you can expect to see one or more of the following additional elements on a retracted article:

1. Official Retraction Notice(s) - Link(s) to the publisher where you can see the publisher's statement about the article being retracted and potentially some more information about the retraction.
2. Retraction Watch Related Article(s) - Link(s) to article on the RetractionWatch.com website where additional context is provided about this particular retraction or authors/publications/publishers related to it.
3. Reason for Retraction from Retraction Watch - Reason(s) noted by the Retraction Watch team why an article was retracted. Not all retractions are "bad" — some are data mistakes brought by the authors requesting a publisher to retract their article so that others do not utilize the paper in their own work when it is faulty. Others however note fraudulent data, fake peer review, plagiarism and more.