Citing a retracted paper can sink your work
In short
To check whether a paper is retracted before citing it, look it up against retraction data from Crossref, OpenAlex and Retraction Watch — a retraction is the formal withdrawal of a paper by its journal, and retracted work keeps getting cited for years afterward. CiteProve flags retractions automatically and surfaces the retraction notice alongside the match, so a withdrawn study is never cited as sound evidence.
Tens of thousands of scholarly papers have been retracted — for fraud, fatal methodological errors, image manipulation, or honest mistakes. The problem: retracted papers continue to be cited as if they were valid, often for a decade after the retraction notice. Most citing authors simply never find out.
Why retractions slip through
- PDFs downloaded before the retraction carry no watermark.
- Reference managers don't re-check entries once imported.
- Retraction notices are published separately and easy to miss.
What CiteProve does
When a citation resolves to a known work, we check its retraction status in the data Crossref and OpenAlex aggregate (including Retraction Watch data). A retracted source gets a prominent warning on its verdict card — even when the citation itself is otherwise perfectly accurate.