After a scientific journal retracts a research paper, how does it alert later online visitors to the paper’s status? Options include appending a note or putting a watermark on the pdf, and/or linking to a retraction notice at the paper’s webpage. Some journals delete the pdf entirely.

And sometimes, it would appear, nothing happens. Nearly a third of retracted papers remain at journal websites and do not have their withdrawn status flagged, claims a study (Steen R.G., J. Med. Ethics, doi: 10.1136/jme.2010.040923) published just before Christmas.

The study, by Grant Steen, followed up research papers noted as retracted in the database PubMed, from 2009-2010. “Journals do not do a careful job of alerting the naïve reader to a retraction,” writes Steen (whose related work this blog has noted before). 31.8% of retracted papers were not noted as retracted at their journal webpage – though they would show up as such in PubMed.

[For the curious, Steen – a medical writer who is president of Medical Communications Consultants – provides an example of such a paper, whose retraction notice is published here. There’s a link back to the original, but no link forward from the original paper to its retraction].