I had never heard of this before but truly astonishing at lengths some people will go to inflate their citations and assume grow their H-index? Academia is so flawed in many ways with all the metrics used to assess our value! #AcademicSky
The ways in which researchers can artificially inflate their reference counts are growing. The ways in which researchers can artificially inflate their reference counts are growing.
Agree that it’s pretty insane. But also important to remember that fraud is a central part of the human condition! Always has been and (probably) always will be. Citations are a flawed metric, like all metrics. But no value assessment is immune to fraud. And yes, we should punish these bad actors.
How much are additional citations actually worth? I wouldn't think they're all that valuable!
So important to be aware of this, thank you for highlighting this article.
This, I assure you, is just the tip of the iceberg. “Papermills” (in some collusion with major publishers incl. Elsevier) are really killing it…. 😀 Just take a look at Pubpeer 🙃😆