Evolution of retracted publications in the medical sciences: Citations analysis, bibliometrics, and altmetrics trends.

We investigated reasons for retraction, pre-and post-retraction citations and Altmetrics indicators of retracted publications in the medical sciences from 2016 to 2020. Data were retrieved from Scopus ( = 840). The Retraction Watch database was used to identify the reasons for retraction and the time that elapsed from publication to retraction.

A grey zone for bibliometrics: publications indexed in Web of Science as anonymous.

Unlabelled: Publications without authorship information have been indexed as anonymous in the Web of Science database over the years. However, discussions on this subject have not been sufficiently addressed in the scholarly literature. Since bibliometrics studies are widely used for bibliometricians, scientific disciplines, science policy, and management, missing significant data as authorship metadata characterizes a gray zone that directly impacts these three components, and by extension, for bibliometrics and scientometrics.