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The citation black market: schemes selling fake references alarm scientists

The ways in which researchers can artificially inflate their reference counts are growing.
By
  1. Dalmeet Singh Chawla

Research-integrity watchers are concerned about the growing ways in which scientists can fake or manipulate the citation counts of their studies. In recent months, increasingly bold practices have surfaced. One approach was revealed through a sting operation in which a group of researchers bought 50 citations to pad the Google Scholar profile of a fake scientist they had created.

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Nature 632, 966 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-01672-7

References

  1. Ibrahim, H., Liu, F., Zaki, Y. & Rahwan, T. Preprint at arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2402.04607 (2024).

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