Improving the Reliability of Literature Reviews: Detection of Retracted Articles through Academic Search Engines

Abstract

Nowadays, a multitude of scientific publications on health science are being developed that require correct bibliographic search in order to avoid the use and inclusion of retracted literature in them. The use of these articles could directly affect the consistency of the scientific studies and could affect clinical practice. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the capacity of the main scientific literature search engines, both general (Gooogle Scholar) and scientific (PubMed, EMBASE, SCOPUS, and Web of Science), used in health sciences in order to check their ability to detect and warn users of retracted articles in the searches carried out. The sample of retracted articles was obtained from RetractionWatch. The results showed that although Google Scholar was the search engine with the highest capacity to retrieve selected articles, it was the least effective, compared with scientific search engines, at providing information on the retraction of articles. The use of different scientific search engines to retrieve as many scientific articles as possible, as well as never using only a generic search engine, is highly recommended. This will reduce the possibility of including retracted articles and will avoid affecting the reliability of the scientific studies carried out.

Beef as intangible cultural heritage in Botswana: a documentary review

“…They were selected based on their timelines (e.g., covered articles as far back as 1915), accessibility (databases that were under subscription by the University of Botswana [UB] Library), and quality in terms of their accuracy with search results [90]. The two databases search for articles indexed by publishers, libraries, repositories, or bibliographic databases [85]. In addition to GS and WoSCC, Google was also used to retrieve relevant sources of grey literature [86].…”

Preface of Special Issue “21st Century Health Communication Challenges: Public Health Emergencies”

“…It is associated with increased uncertainty about what is and what is not evidence-based health information, leading to decreased adherence to health authority recommendations [ 5 ], but also making people less critical of the messages they receive and thus more likely to believe biased information [ 4 , 5 ]. When the need arises to consult doubts about a pathology or any health-related situation and access to a reliable source of information is not readily available, patients and their relatives seek information on the most convenient and accessible tool they have: the Internet [ 6 ].…”

“…There are various actors involved in spreading erroneous, or confusing messages. These range from individual users, motivated by personal reasons, conspiratorial feelings [ 1 , 2 , 3 ], false beliefs that have been internalized [ 2 , 3 ], or simple confusion whereby misinformation is spread believing it to be true [ 6 ], to automated accounts or bots, identified as key elements in the dissemination of disinformation [ 3 ]. The latter actors have been especially important in efforts to discredit vaccination, nutrition, and cancer treatment or in the advocacy of miracle remedies.…”

“…Amongst the primary resources at their disposal is scientific production via research publications in impact journals, and it is necessary to control the flow of cited articles. In this way, have an impact on avoiding the damage done to the body of knowledge when retracted literature is included in scientific manuscripts and can compromise the scientific reliability of knowledge in health sciences [ 6 ]. The involvement of health professionals requires institutional support in the form of specific training in scientific critical reading, research methodology, and communication.…”