Retracting papers

A correspondence article in EMBO Reports discusses how many scientific papers should be retracted. Not surprisingly it found that high impact journals had significantly more retractions compared to low-impact journals. However, they conclude that this is due to the increased readership of the high impact journals and not on the overall quality of the papers.

Open access and internet technology get a pat on the back by the authors when they summarize,

"...the positive relationship between visibility of research and post-publication scrutiny suggests that the technical and sociological progress in information dissemination—the internet, omnipresent electronic publishing and the open access initiative—inadvertently improves the self-correction of science by making scientific publications more visible and accessible".

Indeed, as I am getting ready to submit my first, first author paper, my greatest concern is not that someone will disagree with my findings, but rather that no one will.