title: The retraction penalty: evidence from the Web of Science.
abstract: Scientific articles are retracted at increasing rates, with the highest rates among top journals. Here we show that a single retraction triggers citation losses through an author's prior body of work. Compared to closely-matched control papers, citations fall by an average of 6.9% per year for each prior publication. These chain reactions are sustained on authors' papers (a) published up to a decade earlier and (b) connected within the authors' own citation network by up to 4 degrees of separation from the retracted publication. Importantly, however, citation losses among prior work disappear when authors self-report the error. Our analyses and results span the range of scientific disciplines.
authors.affiliation: Simon School of Business, University of Rochester.
authors.forename: Susan Feng
authors.initials: SF
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.forename: Ginger Zhe
authors.initials: GZ
authors.lastname: Jin
authors.forename: Brian
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Uzzi
authors.forename: Benjamin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Jones