Retracted Article Alerts Incorporated into LibKey Products, Including ONESEARCH

According to the co-founder of the Retraction Watch Database, Ivan Oransky, “Retraction Watch has witnessed a retraction boom since its founding 12 years ago”. This rise in retracted articles has translated into an increased risk of scholarly authors inadvertently citing a retracted paper without realizing it.

To mitigate this risk, a variety of library tools have started incorporating functionality that notifies their users whenever they come across an article that has been signposted as a retraction. To keep things as seamless as possible, these tools are not requiring their users to pause their research and jump to a second library product to look something up, but rather are incorporating these retraction flags/alerts as a safety “speed bump” in their process.

For example, Third Iron’s LibKey products like the MSK Library’s ONESEARCH discovery tool has begun including retraction status flags and reasons to help searchers make better informed decisions just as they are about to access the full-text PDF format of articles.

Here’s what it look like in practice – take, for example, this PubMed-indexed retracted article:

Hassan M, Watari H, AbuAlmaaty A, Ohba Y, Sakuragi N. Apoptosis and molecular targeting therapy in cancer. Biomed Res Int. 2014;2014:150845. doi: 10.1155/2014/150845. Epub 2014 Jun 12. Retraction in: Biomed Res Int. 2020 Aug 28;2020:2451249. PMID: 25013758; PMCID: PMC4075070.

The database citation record gets similarly flagged as a Retracted Article in ONESEARCH:

However, the retracted status becomes most obvious to the user at the critical point when they are about to decide whether or not they should invest time reading the full-text article:

Learn more About Article Retractions in Third Iron products or Ask Us at the MSK Library.

From Cancer Patient to Cancer Survivor

Larry Norton, MD

Larry Norton, MD. Photo by Juliana Thomas.

A recent Washington Post article about advances in cancer treatment features MSK.

The article begins by sharing the experiences of a patient, Kelly Spill, who enrolled in an MSK clinical trial using immunotherapy to treat her rectal cancer. She and the other 17 trial participants all had a complete clinical response from the treatment. Ms. Spill has been cancer-free for nearly three years.

For many, cancer is now serious but treatable. MSK’s Dr. Larry Norton attributes this to improvements in prevention, screening, diagnostics, and treatment. He makes special note of the impact immunotherapies have had on many patient outcomes.

These positive changes make the need for survivorship care even more critical. Learn more about MSK’s survivorship and follow-up care programs.

The 2023 Journal Citation Report is Here!

In June of 2023, the latest update of Journal Citation Reports (JCR) was released by Clarivate. As each year’s JCR release offers the previous year’s data, this latest release provides 2022 data.

The JCR (sourced from Web of Science Core Collection) is a database that offers journal metrics which are helpful for comparing journal rankings, or relative standing of journals, within a field/discipline. As such, this database, along with other resources, is often used by the authors for determining the most appropriate journal for submitting their manuscript.

Clarivate has made the following changes in this year’s release (they only impact the 2022 data released in June 2023 and were not retroactively applied to previous years):

  • Expanded JIF coverage
    The Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is now extended to all Web of Science (WOS) Core Collection journals, including those indexed in the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI) and the multidisciplinary Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI). Thus, JIF is now applied to all editorially selected, quality journals, including open access, niche, and regional journals
  • Altered JIF presentation
    The JIF has been reduced to one decimal place rather than the previously used three decimal places. According to Clarivate, the change has been made to encourage users to consider other indicators and descriptive data in the JCR when comparing journals.

This year’s release allows researchers to quickly identify which journals in over 250 disciplines were cited most often, explore citing journals, affiliations and geographic locations of contributing authors, and other analytics.

To access the Library’s JCR subscription, use MSK Library’s A-Z Database list. If you need more information about this resource, please don’t hesitate to ASK US.