Retracted Covid-19 papers and the levels of ‘citation pollution’: A preliminary analysis and directions for further research

These datasets inform the study titled "Retracted Covid-19 papers and the levels of ‘citation pollution’: A preliminary analysis and directions for further research". Our aims with this paper are as follows:1) By interrogating cases of papers citing the 33 retracted papers, specifically papers that review Covid-19 literature and/or case studies, we demonstrate the need for ongoing and more in-depth studies that focus on the phenomenon of citation pollution caused by weak or questionable scientific practices.2) We show that the “Covid-19 publication race” has potentially aggravated the distortion of published science on Covid-19.3) We highlight trends that could help understand how citation pollution may potentially escalate and consequently, how it may be mitigated.

Several concerns were raised with respect to the veracity of the data and analyses conducted. Authors would not transfer the full dataset, client contracts, and the full ISO audit report to their servers for analysis as such transfer would violate client agreements and confidentiality requirements. Reviewers were not able to conduct an independent and private peer review and therefore notified us of their withdrawal from the peer-review process 2.
Mehra et al., This retract is related to Mehra et al., (2020a) (Ret). Because all the authors were not granted access to the raw data and the raw data could not be made available to a third-party auditor, we are unable to validate the primary data sources underlying our article.

3.
Wang et al., The authors have retracted this article. After the publication of this article, it came to the authors attention that in order to support the conclusions of the study, the authors should have used primary T cells instead of T-cell lines. In addition, there are concerns that the flow cytometry methodology applied here was flawed. These points resulted in the conclusions being considered invalid. The authors have withdrawn their manuscript whilst they perform additional experiments to test some of their conclusions further. 7.

Zhuang et al., (2020) (Ret)
Editor office's response for Ahead of Print article withdrawn The article "Potential false-positive rate among the 'asymptomatic infected individuals' in close contacts of COVID-19 patients" was under strong discussion after pre-published. Questions from the readers mainly focused on the article's results and conclusions were depended on theoretical deduction, but not the field epidemiology data and further researches were needed to prove the current theory. Based on previous discussions, the article was decided to be offline by the editorial board from the pre-publish lists. 9.
Beato-Víbora (2020) (Ret) The Editor of Diabetes Technology & Therapeutics is officially retracting the article entitled, "No Deleterious Effect of Lockdown Due to COVID-19 Pandemic on Glycaemic Control, Measured by Glucose Monitoring, in Adults with Type 1 Diabetes," by Beato-Vibora. After the Instant Online publication of the article, the journal editor received correspondence indicating that some portions of the paper may have been plagiarised. An internal investigation was launched into the accusation, and though the charge of plagiarism was not found to be compelling, it was discovered that the author's Institutional Review Board approval statements for the paper were secured after submission and publication of the article, and only after the publisher requested said documentation. The author explained that IRB approval was not secured due to her institution's closure because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite these unusual circumstances, it is a clear violation of proper and standard protocols for studies containing human subjects, and therefore the Journal officially retracts the paper. 10. Zeng and Zhen (2020) (Ret) On Feb 26, 2020, we were informed by the authors of this Correspondence that the account described therein was not a first-hand account, as the authors had claimed, and that they wished to withdraw the piece. We have therefore taken the decision to retract this correspondence. By this letter we would like to retract our case report entitled "First viral replication of Covid-19 identified in the peritoneal dialysis fluid of a symptomatic patient" that we submitted to your journal one week ago. We indeed wanted to inform the renal community of a potential presence of Covid-19 virus in the peritoneal dialysis fluid in patients undergoing peritoneal dialysis treatment. However, the patient general status impaired and he was transferred to an intensive care unit for acute myocardial insufficiency. During this stay, he was re-checked for a number of other organs alterations. A total of 7 RT-PCR SARS-Cov2 tests , validated by the National Reference Center, were done … A serological test was also performed. All tests were found negative. 13. Kumar (2020)

(Ret)
This article have been RETRACTED by publisher. The wrong paper has been published due to some technical glitch. The information pertaining in this paper is misleading the readers and creating massive conflicts amid the scientific community.

Gormley and Ngan (2020) (Ret)
The Publisher regrets that this article is an accidental duplication of an article that has already been published. The duplicate article has therefore been withdrawn.

Tofade and Daftary (2020) (Ret)
The Publisher regrets that this article is an accidental duplication of an article that has already been published. The duplicate article has therefore been withdrawn. 16. Singh (2020) The authors have withdrawn this manuscript at the request of their local IRB, because the objectives outlined in this study were not specifically approved by the IRB. 29. Parves (2020)

(Ret)
The authors have withdrawn this manuscript because of a violation of research ethics. Unknown to the first author, the corresponding author -the main designer of the project -did not obtain consent for the use of a data-set. 30. Chu et al., The authors have withdrawn their manuscript whilst they wish to perform additional experiments to validate their conclusions further. Therefore, the authors do not wish this work to be cited as reference for the project 31. Gaibazzi et al., The author has voluntarily withdrawn this manuscript because of questions raised about privacy issues in the conduct of this retrospective chart review. That issue is being contested by the author. 33. Mallick et al., (2020) (Ret) N/A

Retracted Covid-19 papers and the levels of 'citation pollution': A preliminary analysis and directions for further research
Van Der Walt et al.