This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: The likely manipulation of citation numbers by research paper mills in high-impact cancer journals has been uncovered by an international team of academic researchers. Their findings point to an organized campaign to inflate citations on paper mill–produced journal articles published in established molecular oncology journals.
The study, "Suspected distortion of citations in high-impact cancer journals," is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Corresponding author and statistician Adrian Barnett, a professor at QUT's Australian Centre for Health Services Innovation and School of Public Health and Social Work, said the researchers had documented a pattern that suggested widespread, coordinated manipulation of citation counts by paper mills. "Artificially high citation rates can inflate journal impact factors, amplify unreliable findings and slow scientific progress," Barnett said.
"Research paper mills are fraudulent organizations that produce and sell manuscripts and publishing services for faked research. "Just as likes and shares indicate social media influencers' audience engagement, citations from other researchers are an important academic measure for evaluating scientists' research impact. "Because citation counts are now a key measure of academic performance, they can incentivize journals and researchers to maximize citation counts." Barnett said paper mill papers were not genuine scientific contributions, so highly manipulated citation counts reflected artificial amplification rather than genuine scientific engagement.
"A danger is that artificially inflated citation counts may distort the evidence base by misinforming future research and clinical translation," he said. Co-researcher Baptiste Scancar said the team evaluated the impact of paper mills on citation patterns in 33,159 articles published in 20 journals between 2012 and 2023. "Applying our previously developed detection model, we flagged a total of 4,085 articles as potentially associated with paper mills, based on their textual similarity to the titles and abstracts of retracted paper mill articles," Scancar said.
"We show that flagged papers had many more citations than nonflagged papers but had fewer readers. "Having more citations but fewer readers makes no sense, as citations come from readers. "Flagged papers mostly cite and are cited by other flagged papers, measurably inflating the citation metrics of some cancer research journals.
"Flagged papers tended to cluster in a subset of journals including Journal of Experimental & Clinical Cancer Research and Molecular Cancer, whereas other journals were only marginally affected. "Our results support the screening of articles and journals for the patterns of citation manipulation we have described." The research team comprised Barnett, Scancar and David Causeur, a professor at L'Institut Agro in France; and Jennifer A. Byrne, a professor at the University of Sydney.
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