ReTracker: an Open-Source Plugin for Automated and Standardized Tracking of Retracted Scholarly Publications

In this paper we present ReTracker, an open-source plugin for tracking retracted scientific journal articles. ReTracker helps Zotero users detect any papers in their current libraries that were retracted on PubMed. At its first release, ReTracker plugin adds metadata for each entry on its "retraction status" as the plugin performs local cache checking and sends a query to the tool's database. If there is a match in the paper's full title between the query and ReTracker's database, the retraction status metadata will be updated. We believe that ReTracker, as an open-source, free tool, is a necessary solution that is distinctive from existing tools (e.g. Open Retractions, Cross-Mark, etc.), in that it enables researchers to manage their existing citation libraries without extra efforts to repetitively search for and manually flag retracted papers from external database(s). With future releases, the tool aims to expand its functionalities in terms of standardizing retraction tags, adding retraction data for other item types, and providing pop-up notices for web browser plugins.