TITLE: Post-retraction citation: a case for radiology-imaging diagnostic
AUTHORS: Sorana D. Bolboacă, Diana-Victoria Buhai, Maria Aluaș, Adriana E. Bulboacă

[DESCRIPTION]
<div class = "text-blocks"><div class = "text-block">Citation of a manuscript could be seen as a measure of study visibility and usefulness. Citations depends by many factors such as the subject of the article, authors (number and collaborations, authors' achievement measures),  accessibility (access to the full text of the manuscript), visibility (paper length, no. of figures and tables, journal),  age of the paper, methods used to make the article known (personal/academic/research pages, dedicated websites, social media), number of cited references, etc. Age of papers and citation windows are essential factors influencing citation patterns but if all publication ethics are followed is expected to have no post retraction citation or at least a proper citation of the retracted manuscript with associated retraction notice. However, when a retracted article is cited must clearly result that the paper was retracted either from the text of the paper or from the reference list. This protocol address the post retraction citation of manuscripts reporting a radiology-imaging diagnostic.</div></div>

[STEPS]
?. [Availability and Eligibility]
Defining de search strategyKeywords:  ((diagnostic or diagnosis) and (imaging or radiology)) AND ((Retracted Publication[sb] OR Retraction of Publication[sb])) Source: PubMed Clinical Queries (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/clinical)Restrictions: Clinical Study Categories- Category = Diagnosis- Scope = Broad- Species = Humans- Languages = English
?. [Availability and Eligibility]
Apply the search strategy and collect the retrieved titlesWhen? June 15, 2017What was stored? The link to all retrieved articles
?. [Availability and Eligibility]
Title and abstract screeningWhere to look after the abstract? PubMed (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/) or on the journal page if no abstract was available in PubMed Inclusion criteria for diagnostic-related technique: radiography, radioscopy, ultrasonography (US, all types), computer tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), positron emission tomography (PET), single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), or scintigraphyReason for exclusion from the analysis
?. [Data collection]
Data collection when elibility passed year and month of publicationthe reported method of imaging diagnostictype of the manuscript (e.g., case report, case series, review, research article)journal nameno. of authorsauthors affiliation countrymonth and year of retractionthe reason for retractionThe time from publication to retraction (months) was calculated based on collected dataCharacteristics of the journal: domain and rank (whenever available; retrieved from https://apps.webofknowledge.com/)
?. [Data collection]
Citations before and after retraction: data collectionDatabase searched: ScopusWhen: September 2017Searched by: title of the retracted article in the Reference sectionCitations: number of prior retraction citations and post retraction citations according to the month and year of retraction and respectively month and year of publication of the article citing a retracted paper.  Post retraction citations:link to the article citing a retracted manuscript (stored in the database in September 2017)eligibility: full text available, language = English, subject of the paper = humans.data collected: title, journal name, year, number of authors, country of the authors, type of citation (positive/negative), identified in the text or the reference as a retracted article (yes/no)when? September - December 2017Post retraction citations:link to the article citing a retracted manuscript (stored in the database in September 2017)eligibility: full text available, language = English, subject of the paper = humans.data collected: title, journal name, year, number of authors, country of the authors, type of citation (positive/negative), identified in the text or the reference as a retracted article (yes/no)when? September - December 2017Whenever a post retraction citation was not included in the analysis, the reason was stored.
?. [Data analysis]
VariablesSplit the dataset: article that reports an ultrasound diagnostic method vs. all other imaging diagnostic method (US/non-US). We decided this split because the US examination has several advantages as compared to other radiology-imaging diagnostic methods such as real-time examination, portability (bedside examination), low cost, harmless (no ionizing radiations), use as diagnosis method, therapeutic procedure, therapeutic follow-up, use in a lot of medical specialties. When an article reported more than one diagnostic method and one was a US method the article was included in the US group.Characteristics of retracted articles: type of the manuscript, JCR journal rank for Web of Science (WoS) indexed journals, number of authors, why the article was retracted, citation until and after retractionCalculated variables: the time from publication to retraction (expressed in months, calculated based on the month-year of publication and month-year of retraction), time from citation to retraction (expressed in years), weighted citation index (WCI, defined as the ratio between number of citations and the citation time window (no. of months/12). The WCI was calculated both for prior (WCIprior) and (WCIpost) post retraction to analyze the dynamics of citations.  Other two dichotomial variables were created to quantify if the number of post retraction citations and respectively WCIpost were higher as compared to those before retraction.
?. [Data analysis]
SoftwareStatistical analysis was conducted with Statistica program (StatSoft USA, v. 8).Microsoft Excel was used for graphicala representations.
?. [Data analysis]
AnalysisNormality of quantitative data was tested with Kolmogorov-Smirnov testComparison between groups (US/non-US) was done with the Mann Whitney testAssociation between positive/negative post-retraction citation and diagnostic technique  (US/non-US) was investigated using the Chi-square test