We’ve seen partial retractions, and retract-and-replacements, but here’s a first (cue timpanis): The Total Retraction.
A Brazilian journal has pulled a 2018 paper on food security for plagiarism — at least, that’s what really happened; the stated reasons are a bit sauced up.
According to the notice:
TOTAL RETRACTION
The editorial team of Revista Ciência & Saúde Coletiva communicates the formal publication of retraction for the extraction of the review article referred to below since it contains conceptual and quotation errors, which prejudices the trustworthiness of the information throughout the entire text.
Restrepo-Arango M; Gutierrez-Builes LA, Rios-Osorio LA. Food security in indigenous and peasant populations: a systematic review. Cien Saude Colet [online]. 2018; 23(4):1169-1181. Available from:
<http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1413-81232018000401169&lng=pt&nrm=iso>. ISSN 1413-8123. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/1413-81232018234.13882016. Available at: http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1413-1232018000401169&lng=pt&nrm=iso
This text was translated into English: Restrepo-Arango M; Gutierrez-Builes LA, Rios-Osorio LA. Food security in indigenous and peasant populations: a systematic review. Cien Saude Colet [online]. 2018; 23(4):1169-1181. ISSN 1413-8123. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/1413-81232018234.13882016.
This is, of course, not the first time we’ve seen journals use euphemisms for plagiarism.
We emailed the editor of the journal for comment — in particular, what was meant by “conceptual errors” — but didn’t hear back. Same with Restrepo-Arango.
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Is this the first retraction issued by a Latin American journal?
Not at all. See, for example, the following study of retractions from Latin American databases: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26520642
Thanks for the info., retractions still are not that common in Latin American journals…
The Retraction Watch database currently includes 240 retractions from Brazil, Mexico and Argentina, with more to come, I believe. This is certainly an underestimate, as article retractions are often not indicated in database records, and it can be difficult to discover them. At the moment there doesn’t seem to be a lot of interest in including this information by regional database providers.