Coercive citation

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Coercive citation is an academic publishing practice in which an editor or referee of a scientific or academic journal forces an author to add spurious citations to an article before the journal will agree to publish it. This is done to inflate the journal's impact factor, thus artificially boosting the journal's scientific reputation. Manipulation of impact factors and self-citation has long been frowned upon in academic circles;[1] however, the results of a 2012 survey indicate that about 20% of academics working in economics, sociology, psychology, and multiple business disciplines have experienced coercive citation.[2] Individual cases have also been reported in other disciplines.[3]

  1. ^ McLeod, Sam (25 September 2020). "Should authors cite sources suggested by peer reviewers? Six antidotes for handling potentially coercive reviewer citation suggestions". Learned Publishing. 34 (2): 282–286. doi:10.1002/leap.1335. ISSN 0953-1513. S2CID 225004022.
  2. ^ Wilhite, A. W.; Fong, E. A. (2012). "Coercive Citation in Academic Publishing". Science. 335 (6068): 542–3. Bibcode:2012Sci...335..542W. doi:10.1126/science.1212540. PMID 22301307. S2CID 30073305.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference smith was invoked but never defined (see the help page).