Deception Through Manipulated Citations and References as a Growing Problem in Scientific Publishing

Citation manipulation in scientific publishing is a pervasive issue that undermines the integrity of academic research. Potential authors, reviewers, and editors engage in citation manipulation to boost their own reputation besides financial gains through university incentives. Citation biases, self-citation, coercive citation, and citation cartels are common tactics used to artificially inflate the impact of research papers. Both the credibility and reliability of published scientific literature have eroded due to such gross violations by researchers. Often, citation manipulation exacerbates existing disparities in academia by favoring established researchers and well-funded institutions while disadvantaging early career scientists. Efforts to combat citation manipulation include enhanced scrutiny during peer review, developing algorithms to detect suspicious citation patterns, and increased transparency in reporting citations. This chapter describes legitimate citations, types of citation manipulation, questionable references, dispelling myths of uncited papers, and a detailed narration on detecting manipulated citations by journals.