TY - JOUR
T1 - Evolution and characterization of health sciences paper retractions in Brazil and Portugal
AU - Candal-Pedreira, Cristina
AU - Ruano-Ravina, Alberto
AU - Rey-Brandariz, Julia
AU - Mourino, Nerea
AU - Ravara, Sofia
AU - Aguiar, Pedro
AU - Pérez-Ríos, Mónica
N1 - Funding Information:
Of the Portuguese funded retracted articles due to misconduct, 33.3% received funding from one source. In contrast, 54.4% of Brazilian articles obtained funding from two different sources. In addition, most articles retracted for misconduct received funding from public sources. In Portugal, 8 (33.3%) of the publicly funded articles received funding from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), 4.2% from Conselho Nacional de Desinvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) and 62.5% from other public sources. In the case of Brazil, 42.3% received funding from Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa (FAP), 40.5% from Conselho Nacional de Desinvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) and 17.2% from Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES).
Funding Information:
Funding institutions should have specific policies and procedures to handle allegations of scientific misconduct of researchers that they fund. This is especially important in the case of publicly funding sources, like governmental institutions. In addition, before providing funding, such institutions should check that researchers have not committed misconduct in the past or are under investigation at the current time. Moreover, specific organisms should be created to deal with scientific misconduct at the national level. Such an organism does not currently exist in Portugal. In Brazil, FAPESP updated in 2014 their Code of Good Scientific Practices and included sanctions to deal with retractions (invalidation of degrees, copyrights, loss of positions, etc.). However, this code is only applied to investigations funded by FAPESP (FAPESP ). A study conducted by Fanelli et al (Fanelli, Costas, and Misconduct Policies ) concluded that having such a national organization greatly prevents scientific misconduct. This organization should be responsible for investigating suspected scientific misconduct and imposing appropriate sanctions which depend on the seriousness of the problem.
Funding Information:
Another worrying fact is that many retracted publications of authors affiliated to Portuguese or Brazilian institutions receive funding from public sources. The results of our study are in line with those from the study conducted by Santos-D’Amorín et al (Santos-D’Amorim et al. ). The most common source of funding varies from country to country. The most frequent source of funding in the case of Portuguese articles was the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) while for Brazilian articles it was the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa (FAP), followed by the Conselho Nacional de Desinvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) and the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES). These are public institutions and consequently the funds used to support research are also public.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - The retraction of health sciences publications is a growing concern. To understand the patterns in a particular country-context and design specific measures to address the problem, it is important to describe and characterize retractions. We aimed to assess the evolution of health science retractions in Brazil and Portugal and to describe their features. We conducted a cross-sectional study including all health sciences retracted articles with at least one author affiliated to a Portuguese or Brazilian institution identified through Retraction Watch database. A total of 182 retracted articles were identified. The number of retractions increased over time, but the proportion related to the whole of publications remained stable. A total of 50.0% and 60.8% of the Portuguese and Brazilian retracted articles, respectively, were published in first and second quartile journals. Scientific misconduct accounted for 60.1% and 55.9% of retractions in Brazil and Portugal. In both countries, the most frequent cause of misconduct was plagiarism. The time from publication to retraction decreases as the journal quartile increases. The retraction of health sciences articles did not decrease over time in Brazil and Portugal. There is a need to develop strategies aimed at preventing, monitoring and managing scientific misconduct according to the country context.
AB - The retraction of health sciences publications is a growing concern. To understand the patterns in a particular country-context and design specific measures to address the problem, it is important to describe and characterize retractions. We aimed to assess the evolution of health science retractions in Brazil and Portugal and to describe their features. We conducted a cross-sectional study including all health sciences retracted articles with at least one author affiliated to a Portuguese or Brazilian institution identified through Retraction Watch database. A total of 182 retracted articles were identified. The number of retractions increased over time, but the proportion related to the whole of publications remained stable. A total of 50.0% and 60.8% of the Portuguese and Brazilian retracted articles, respectively, were published in first and second quartile journals. Scientific misconduct accounted for 60.1% and 55.9% of retractions in Brazil and Portugal. In both countries, the most frequent cause of misconduct was plagiarism. The time from publication to retraction decreases as the journal quartile increases. The retraction of health sciences articles did not decrease over time in Brazil and Portugal. There is a need to develop strategies aimed at preventing, monitoring and managing scientific misconduct according to the country context.
KW - Brazil
KW - Portugal
KW - Retractions
KW - scientific misconduct
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85131594050&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/08989621.2022.2080549
DO - 10.1080/08989621.2022.2080549
M3 - Article
C2 - 35620976
AN - SCOPUS:85131594050
SN - 0898-9621
JO - Accountability in Research
JF - Accountability in Research
ER -