Improving the Reliability of Literature Reviews: Detection of Retracted Articles through Academic Search Engines

Nowadays, a multitude of scientific publications on health science are being developed that require correct bibliographic search in order to avoid the use and inclusion of retracted literature in them. The use of these articles could directly affect the consistency of the scientific studies and coul...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Pastor-Ramon, Elena, Herrera-Peco, Ivan, Agirre, Oskia, García-Puente, María, Morán, José María
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2022
País:España
Institución:Conselleria de Salut i Consum del Govern de les Illes Balears
Repositorio:Docusalut
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:docusalut.com:20.500.13003/17747
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13003/17747
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Ethics
Retracted Publication
Biomedical Research
Scholarly Communication
Professional Misconduct
Research Design
Publicación Retractada
Mala Conducta Profesional
Proyectos de Investigación
Investigación Biomédica
Comunicación Académica
Ética
research methodology
biomedical publishing
publication ethics
scientific misconduct
retraction of publication
Descripción
Sumario:Nowadays, a multitude of scientific publications on health science are being developed that require correct bibliographic search in order to avoid the use and inclusion of retracted literature in them. The use of these articles could directly affect the consistency of the scientific studies and could affect clinical practice. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the capacity of the main scientific literature search engines, both general (Gooogle Scholar) and scientific (PubMed, EMBASE, SCOPUS, and Web of Science), used in health sciences in order to check their ability to detect and warn users of retracted articles in the searches carried out. The sample of retracted articles was obtained from RetractionWatch. The results showed that although Google Scholar was the search engine with the highest capacity to retrieve selected articles, it was the least effective, compared with scientific search engines, at providing information on the retraction of articles. The use of different scientific search engines to retrieve as many scientific articles as possible, as well as never using only a generic search engine, is highly recommended. This will reduce the possibility of including retracted articles and will avoid affecting the reliability of the scientific studies carried out.