research ethicists are concerned about the growing possibilities of how scientists can falsify or manipulate the citation figures of their studies. In the past few months, the brazen practices have increasingly appeared. A method was unveiled by a sting operation in which a group of researchers bought 50 citations to inflate the Google Scholar profile of a fictional scientist that they had created.

The scientists bought the citations for $ 300 from a company that apparently sold fake citations in masses. This confirms the existence of a black market for fake references that have long speculated about the research integrity detection nose, the team says.

"We started to notice several Google Scholar profiles with questionable citation courses," says Yasir Zaki, an computer scientist at New York University (NYU) Abu Dhabi, whose team described the Sting operation in a February Preprint. "If a manuscript receives hundreds of citations within a few days after publication, or if a scientist has a sudden and massive increase in citations, then you know that something is wrong."

These practices are worrying because many aspects of a researcher's career depend on how many references their work receive. Many institutions use quotation figures to evaluate scientists, and the numbers inform metrics such as the H-index, which is intended to measure the productivity of scientists and the effects of their studies.

Creating manipulation can have real consequences. In June, the Spanish newspaper El País reported that Research Ethics Committee of the State asked the University of Salamanca to artificially investigate, investigate the work of its newly appointed Rector Juan Manuel Corchado, an computer scientist who is accused of artificially investigating his Google Scholar metrics.

references to be sold

Research ethicist already suspected that citation in paper mills are available, which produce inferior studies and sell autor places on already accepted papers, says Cyril Labbé, a computer scientist at the university Grenoble Alpes in France. "Paper mills have the opportunity to add citations to the papers they sell," he says.

In November 2023, the analysis company Clarivate in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, concluded more than 1,000 researchers from his annual list of from afared manipulation and 'Hyper publishing'.

In their Sting operation, Zaki and his colleagues created a Google Scholar profile for a fictional scientist and loaded 20 with the help of artificial intelligence.

The team then turned to a company that they found when they analyzed suspicious citations that were linked to one of the authors of their data record and seemed to sell citations to Google Scholar profiles. The study authors contacted the company by email and later communicated via WhatsApp. The company offered $ 50 citation for $ 300 or $ 100. The authors opted for the first option and 40 days later 50 citations from studies in 22 magazines - of which 14 in the scientific database indicated by the Scopus - added to the fictional research profile on Google Scholar.

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