Abstract:

To analysis the distribution and citation characteristics of high cited retracted articles which were
obtained from the Web of Science（ WoS）.There were 430 high cited retracted articles， which were distributed
in 31 countries，mostly distributed in multidisciplinary sciences. The number of retracted articles were more
than 3 among 35 journals. Time-to-retraction and total citation had a weak association（ P=0.004），had a
positive correlation with the citation of pre-retraction（P=0.000）.There was positive correlation among IF and
the number of retracted articles， total citation，perpaper citation（P=0.017、P=0.000、P=0.005）. Time-toretraction
and total citation had a weak association（ P=0.000）. Retracted articles which have published in the
higher IF journal have a increasing negative impact on the academic community. With the increase of time-toretraction，
the citation of pre-retraction was becoming larger and larger. The effect of self purification of journal
is not perfect. It is recommended that the researcher should pay more attention to retracted articles.