Re:Prestigious Science Journals Struggle to Reach Even Avera...
by 2020-3030 on Wednesday February 21, 2018 @06:46PM
(#16434004)
The Retraction Watch website http://retractionwatch.com/ is one good method of highlighting retracted work. For researchers in any given field, keeping current on literature is hard work given the pace of publication but does include seeing retractions.
So, the answer to your question depends on which researchers we mean. Experts in a field have the best chance of noticing relevant retractions in their own field. If you are a researcher in one field who has interests in many other fields, it is probably much less likely that you will be able to follow the retractions in those peripheral fields. That is why Retraction Watch and other mechanisms of highlighting such errors is useful.
Although I would certainly not assert that research in the "top" journals is particularly unreliable, it is not unbelievable that, when they tend to publish more extraordinary result, a smaller percentage of that tends to be true. I have not seen any indication that that leads to such journals losing influence, and it certainly doesn't lead to the Impact Factor being lowered - which often influences the "perception that having work published in it is a meaningful professional achievement".