Issue: 45(4) November 2019. Original articles Pages 85 – 88
Anton Glasnović
University of Zagreb School of Medicine, Croatian Medical Journal, Zagreb, Croatia; [email protected]; ORCID 000-002-0760-9922
Tamara Krajna
University of Zagreb, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, Zagreb, Croatia; ORCID 0000-0002-5132-8765
Jelka Petrak
University of Zagreb School of Medicine, Zagreb, Croatia; ORCID 0000-0003-1481-2598
Abstract
Objective
To calculate the number of scientific articles published but later retracted, to analyse the reasons for the retractions, and to compare the results with those from EU countries comparable to Croatia in terms of expenditure on R&D and the number of active researchers.
Methods
We searched for retracted articles published between 1990 and 2017, with at least one Croatian author, indexed by the Web of Science Core Collection (WoS CC) and identified those that had been retracted (as ascertained from the Retraction Watch database). The number of such articles was compared to the number similarly arrived at for three other EU countries. The retraction notices of the Croatian articles were scrutinized to determine the date and the reasons for retraction.
Results
Of the 17 articles the retraction of which could be verified in the original source and/or from a retraction notice, four had been published in Croatian journals. The time from publication to retraction ranged from one month to nine years. Most such articles belonged to the field of biomedicine, and more than a half were retracted because of scientific misconduct (plagiarism and redundant or duplicate publication).
Conclusion
The number of retracted articles by Croatian authors was relatively small compared to the total number of articles indexed in WoSS CC, and the proportion was not significantly different from that from comparable countries.
