Journals Inflate Their Prestige by Coercing Authors to Cite Them

February 3, 2012, 3:13 pm

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A survey published today in Science shows that journal editors often ask prospective authors to add superfluous citations of the journal to articles, and authors feel they can’t refuse. (The Science paper is for subscribers only, but you can read a summary here.) The extra citations artificially inflate a journal’s impact and prestige. About 6,600 academics responded to the survey, and about 20 percent said they had been asked to add such citations even though no editor or reviewer had said their article was deficient without them. About 60 percent of those surveyed said they would comply with such a request, which was most often aimed at junior faculty members.

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reidwmc

why do they feel coerced or unable to refuse?
mbelvadi

Name the journals and their publishers! The only way to stop legal but unethical behavior is to publicly shame them, and warn other researchers to avoid them.
22116123

As a reviewer I often ask the authors to include relevant citations to prior publications in the journal to which they have submitted — not to increase the citation index — but to help the readership of the journal recognize the prior work within that particular journal. I’m not surprised that my requests are more likely to go to junior faculty, who may not be as well trained to dig into the prior publication history related to their manuscript.
dank48

This is a masterpiece of charity.
dpn33

22116123, you are being generous and helpful. You probably aren’t telling these junior colleagues to cite articles from the journal in which they are trying to publish. The problem is — and it’s been known for a while — some journals’ editors and other representatives, will recommend that other articles from that journal be cited, even though they are superfluous or even irrelevant. Artificial inflation of citations in various ways has been going on for a while. ISI will actually do something if they discover such misbehavior, but it’s often difficult to prove that the “encouragement” was done with mal-intent.
pflady

because they want their papers published in that journal!
jabberwocky12

In addition to nudging the authors to their journal by giving them set references, the editors also couch it behind carefully-chosen words. They say things like “We prefer to publish papers that extend a debate that is currently deemed important in our journal.” You can interpret that as you will.
spinnaker

Of course, they’re not as well trained, but give them time, and they’ll get it.
reidwmc

When I hear the word “coerced” I think of the word “forced” like the are unable to stop it from happening. Which they can stop it from happening though it may mean their article might not get published, but that issue was not stated in the above article.