The impact of citation manipulation can be serious and it can distort the scientific record. It is a form of research misconduct that is not often discussed in institutional policies, resources and professional development. But citation manipulation has resulted in papers being retracted. As discussed by this open access paper, published in January 2022, publications need to be alert to this problem. Host institutions, funding bodies an learned societies should be playing their part as well.
Citation is an essential practice in scientific publishing. However, it is mandatory that citing the sources in a scientific work is performed in a proper manner. Manipulating citations in research articles is one form of academic research misconduct that violates publication ethics. Citation manipulation simply occurs for the purpose of increasing the number of citations of a researcher or a journal. Unfortunately, there has been a growing trend for this type of misconduct recently and this has not received much attention from the science community. The most effective solution to prevent the growth of such unethical practices is for reputable journals to impose stricter rules on reference evaluation criteria in order to emphasize on the appropriateness of the citations.
Keywords
Citation manipulation, research misconduct, publication ethics, research metrics, citation coercion, pay to cite
Mehregan M. Scientific journals must be alert to potential manipulation in citations and referencing. Research Ethics. 2022;18(2):163-168. doi:10.1177/17470161211068745
Publisher (Open Access): https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/17470161211068745