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Self-correction of science: a comparative study of negative citations and post-publication peer review

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  • Frederique Bordignon

    (Ecole des Ponts)

Abstract

This study investigates whether negative citations in articles and comments posted on post-publication peer review platforms are both equally contributing to the correction of science. These 2 types of written evidence of disputes are compared by analyzing their occurrence in relation to articles that have already been retracted or corrected. We identified retracted or corrected articles in a corpus of 72,069 articles coming from the Engineering field, from 3 journals (Science, Tumor Biology, Cancer Research) and from 3 authors with many retractions to their credit (Sarkar, Schön, Voinnet). We used Scite to retrieve contradicting citations and PubPeer to retrieve the number of comments for each article, and then we considered them as traces left by scientists to contest published results. Our study shows that contradicting citations are very uncommon and that retracted or corrected articles are not more contradicted in scholarly articles than those that are neither retracted nor corrected but they do generate more comments on Pubpeer, presumably because of the possibility for contributors to remain anonymous. Moreover, post-publication peer review platforms, although external to the scientific publication process contribute more to the correction of science than negative citations. Consequently, post-publication peer review venues, and more specifically the comments found on it, although not contributing to the scientific literature, are a mechanism for correcting science. Lastly, we introduced the idea of strengthening the role of contradicting citations to rehabilitate the clear expression of judgment in scientific papers.

Suggested Citation

  • Frederique Bordignon, 2020. "Self-correction of science: a comparative study of negative citations and post-publication peer review," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(2), pages 1225-1239, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:124:y:2020:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-020-03536-z
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-020-03536-z
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    2. Brady Lund & Amrollah Shamsi, 2023. "Examining the use of supportive and contrasting citations in different disciplines: a brief study using Scite (scite.ai) data," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(8), pages 4895-4900, August.
    3. Eleonora Alabrese, 2022. "Bad Science: Retractions and Media Coverage," CESifo Working Paper Series 10195, CESifo.
    4. Linhong Xu & Kun Ding & Yuan Lin & Chunbo Zhang, 2023. "Does citation polarity help evaluate the quality of academic papers?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(7), pages 4065-4087, July.
    5. Linhong Xu & Kun Ding & Yuan Lin, 2022. "Do negative citations reduce the impact of cited papers?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(2), pages 1161-1186, February.
    6. Sergio Copiello, 2020. "Other than detecting impact in advance, alternative metrics could act as early warning signs of retractions: tentative findings of a study into the papers retracted by PLoS ONE," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(3), pages 2449-2469, December.
    7. Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva & Quan-Hoang Vuong, 2021. "The right to refuse unwanted citations: rethinking the culture of science around the citation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(6), pages 5355-5360, June.

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