The index is based on the set of the scientists most cited papers and. In my reply to wertheimer and millers paper on coercive offers and payment for research participation1 i claim that its not unreasonable to suppose that there is another normative aspect to these cases, over and above the voluntariness of consent. Consider a measure of impact factor biased selfcitation practices from here on. Over the last decade, the observation that articles made. For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription. Wilhite and fong point to a handful of business journals as being among the. The editors of jf, jfqa, jfe, raps, rcfs, and rfs hereby affirm that it has been, and will continue to be, our policy to avoid coercive citation practices. Inflation of impact factors by journal selfcitation in. Research minigrant, university of alabama in huntsville. The hindex is an authorlevel metric that attempts to measure both the productivity and citation impact of the publications of a scientist or scholar. Coercive citation in academic publishing scientific publications allen wwilhite. While the parents of children at willowbrook and the millionaires mistress might have given consent that was voluntary and informed, they. A read is counted each time someone views a publication summary such as the title, abstract, and list of authors, clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the fulltext.
The publisher has informed wiley, publisher of ldd, and elsevier, publisher of catena and geoderma, of their findings. A simple journal ranking tactic to address coercive. Wilhite coauthored a paper on the practice off coercive citation in academic publishing. A users guide to inflated and manipulated impact factors. Citation stacking is the concentration of the citation exchange between two or more journals. Recently, wilhite and fong published an alarming report on coercive citation practices of editors. Professors expose the uncomfortably common practice of. For half of these manuscripts, he suggested that authors add a total of 622 additional references, mostly to ldd. This cited by count includes citations to the following articles in scholar. Overview context research research evalution the power of.
Feb 03, 2012 coercive citation in academic publishing. The type of publisher appears to be influential, as hypothesized. If such a request is made before accepting a paper, it can easily feel coercive and the author might feel pressured to cite the recommended articles for fear of rejection. A survey found that 86% of academics consider coercive citation unethical but 20% have experienced it. Feb 04, 20 this paper describes a flexible way to unify the many disparate citation based journal ranking metrics commonly used to assess the relative merit of academic business journals.
Forum discussion topic final committee on publication ethics. Coercive journal self citations, impact factor, journal. The guiding principle for the proposed approach is the simple and intuitively appealing idea that a journal in a given discipline should be judged relative to the. Apr, 2014 by following the recently published paper in science titled coercive citation in academic publishing, in this paper, we aim to discuss the demand of some journals that request authors to cite recently published papers in that journal to increase the impact factor of that journal. And there is a publishing practice that combines them two. Editors joint policy statement regarding coercive citations. While we retain professional discretion to suggest that authors cite particular papers, we will do so only when scientifically appropriate, and without regard to the journal where the cited. Citations have become a form of academic currency in the modern publish or perish climate, and. Wilhite suggests that requesting selfcitations i give no indication that the manuscript was lacking in attribution. Coercive citation is only one part of a broader set of dysfunctional behaviours resulting from a demand for measures of quality or impact that provide excuses for tenure and promotion committees and research evaluation panels to avoid reading and assessing the contribution of academic papers for themselves. While we retain professional discretion to suggest that authors cite particular papers, we will do so only when scientifically appropriate, and without regard to the journal where the cited paper is published. Business journals combat coercive citation science.
Based on three decades of citation data from across scientific fields of science, we study trends in impact factor biased selfcitations of scholarly journals, using a purposebuilt and easy to use citation based measure. According to their research, wilhite and fong determined that many journal editors engage in the practice of coercion, requiring authors to add citations to the journal that is considering publishing the work. Journals appear to preferentially target younger authors and authors from nonenglishspeaking countries. How to identify coercive citation requests from an editor 8 min read. Please remove any authoridentifying information from this file. Previous study only investigated coercive citation from editors to enrich journals citations. A timeseries analysis of the scale of coercive journal. On january 2, 2018 coercive citations, imaginary authors and citation padding were brought to my attention with a happy new year letter by nature briefing 1 citing the plos one paper 2 where padded citations are described as rampant in academia quoting a. Introduction background of impact factor impact factor if or journal impact factor jif has been variably defined as a measure of the average number of citations to recent articles published in that journal in a particular year under. Per creating citation in mla cite generator mind, digital files can exist independently from the web or a published disc. Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. Coercive citation in academic publishing article pdf available in science 3356068. The case comes amid efforts by elsevier to crack down on the practice of coercive citation. Authorship and citation manipulation in academic research.
Coercive citation is an academic publishing practice in which an editor of a scientific or academic journal forces an author to add spurious citations to an article before the journal will agree to publish it. Is it ethical for journals to request selfcitation. Coercive selfcitation exists and is more common in the business disciplines than in economics, sociology, and psychology. By following the recently published paper in science titled coercive citation in academic publishing, in this paper, we aim to discuss the demand of some journals that request authors to cite recently published papers in that journal to increase the impact factor of that journal. Coercive citation is a malpractice in academic publishing wherein an editor of a scientific journal approached and coerced authors to add unwarranted citations to articles before the editor will agree to publish it. Coercive citation in academic publishing request pdf. The authors define coercive citations as requests that give no indication the manuscript is lacking in attribution but instead simply guide authors to add citations to the editors journal. The american psychological association publication manual states, cite the work of those individuals whose ideas, theories, or research have. The classic 2year impact factor including journal self citations 2yif of a journal is typically referred to as the impact factor. Our measure is given by the ratio between i the relative share of journal selfcitations to papers published in the last two years, and ii the relative share of journal. Basic properties of both percentile ranks cores and the i3 indicator.
Editorial on coercive citations, imaginary authors and. Aug 08, 2018 citation stacking is the concentration of the citation exchange between two or more journals. Fong coercive citation in academic publishing, policy forum, 3 february, p. Examples are a pdf file stored on your computer, a document created by a peer using a word processor, a scanned image you received as an email attachment, and a sound recording formatted for playing on a digital audio player. Coercive citation in academic publishing investigated. Fong many journal editors appear to strategically target authors and papers to pressure them into citing the editors journals. A largescale analysis of impact factor biased journal. A largescale analysis of impact factor biased journal self. They submitted their coauthored paper, coercive citation in academic publishing, to the highly respected journal science they were tough on us to make sure all of our statistics were correct. Numerous academic studies point to gender symmetry in the prevalence of intimate partner violence ipv. They suggest that such practices are motivated by intent to increase measured journal impact factors. It will be mentioned that some of these demands are not ethical and consequently will diminish the reputation.
They require additional citation of articles in the journal. Coercive citation and honorary authorship, alabama council of graduate deans retreat orange beach, al. This article explains how an author can identify a coercive. Journals published by forprofit companies used coercive citation more than those published by university presses.
This paper describes a flexible way to unify the many disparate citationbased journal ranking metrics commonly used to assess the relative merit of academic business journals. Academic societies also coerce more than university presses. Some journal editors ask authors to include inappropriate or irrelevant citations in their papers in an effort to artificially inflate the journals impact factor. Overview context research research evalution the power of citation tracking for your research use and abuse 4. Conflicts of interest in academic publishing wikipedia. Submissions jfqa journal of financial and quantitative. Highly cited researcher banned from journal board for.
A timeseries analysis of the scale of coercive journal self. This paper examines the issue of coercive journal self citations and the practical usefulness of two recent journal performance metrics, namely the eigenfactor score, which may be interpreted as measuring journal influence, and the article influence score, using the thomson reuters isi web of science hereafter isi data for 2009 for the 200 most highly cited journals in each of the. Wilhite and fong also find that coercive selfcitation exists and is more common in the business disciplines than in economics, sociology, and psychology. Citation coercion is not a new phenomenon in academic publishing. Primer on coercive citation in academic publishing enago.
Surgical castration, coercive offers and coercive effects. Many of these studies report findings from surveys with small andor unrepresentative samples that have insufficient questions to. The hindex correlates with obvious success indicators such as winning the nobel prize, being accepted for research fellowships and holding positions at top universities. While the european geosciences union could not identify more than one editor engaging in coercive citation behavior, its investigation was limited to egu journals. How to identify coercive citation requests from an editor. Coercive citation in academic publishing wilhite, allen w fong, eric a. Whether youre using apa, mla, cms, or some other major citation style, this academic citation resource guide has you covered via 40 links to style guides, faqs, tutorials, quizzes, sample papers, and tools to streamline your citation and research processes. Register for comprehensive research tips and expert advice on english writing, journal publishing, good publication practices, trends in publishing, and a lot more.
According to a forum discussion by the committee on publication ethics cope, coercive citation can range from a suggestion of the editors to the authors to look whether the journal has published papers that are relevant to the current paper and cite them so that readers can better follow the line of research as published in that journal. Coercive citation is an unethical practice in which an editor forces researchers to add unnecessary citations to other papers that belong to the same journal. Our original resources for authors and journals will help you become an expert in academic publishing. Wilhite and others published coercive citation in academic publishing find, read and cite all the research you need on researchgate. The ones marked may be different from the article in the profile. Scientists have examined the unethical practices of some. In its most extreme version coercive citation should be understood as a request by editors to add citations to a submitted manuscript of papers published by their own journal with the implicit threat of rejection of the manuscript if the advice is not followed. Additionally, some editors seem to target specific articles and authors. The influence of editorial decisions and the academic network on selfcitations and journal impact factors a wilhite, ea fong, s wilhite research policy 48 6, 151522, 2019. A simple journal ranking tactic to address coercive citation. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of editor behavior. But keep in mind that, despite the quantitative approach to the study, the responses were also based on perception, i.
To assist you, weve searched the web to find the most helpful resources. Coercive citation is only one part of a broader set of dysfunctional behaviours resulting from a demand for measures of quality or impact that provide excuses for tenure and promotion committees and research evaluation panels to avoid reading and assessing the contribution of. Honorary authorship, coercive citations and padding in. Jun 22, 20 coercive citation is a malpractice in academic publishing wherein an editor of a scientific journal approached and coerced authors to add unwarranted citations to articles before the editor will agree to publish it.
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