PHONY MATH CITATIONS

 THE QUALITY OF A RESEARCH PAPER, in mathematics as well as other areas, is often assessed by counting the number of other scholars who have referred to the paper. Alas, this citation practice has been gamed by culprits in efforts to glorify their own institutions. Michele Catanzaro writes about this in AAAS Science, January 30, 2024: “Citation Cartels Help Some Mathematicians—and Their Universities—Climb the Rankings.”

Catanzaro recounts, “Cliques of mathematicians at institutions in China, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere have been artificially boosting their colleagues’ citation counts by churning out low-quality papers that repeatedly reference their work, according to an unpublished analysis seen by Science. As a result, their universities—some of which do not appear to have math departments—now produce a greater number of highly cited math papers each year than schools with a strong track record in the field, such as Stanford and Princeton universities.” 

Why the Scam? “These so-called ‘citation cartels,’” Catanzaro says, “appear to be trying to improve their universities’ rankings, according to experts in publication practices. ‘The stakes are high—movements in the rankings can cost or make universities tens of millions of dollars,’ says Cameron Neylon, a professor of research communication at Curtin University. ‘It is inevitable that people will bend and break the rules to improve their standing.’ ”

But Why Only Math? Not that mathematicians are a bunch of rascals. Rather, it’s the nature of math publications: Each specific field is small, its number of publications is relatively low, and thus, “… small increases in publication and citation tend to distort the representation and analysis of the overall field.” 

At least this is the view of Clarivate, a publishing analytics company that, notes Catanzaro, “has excluded the entire field of math from the most recent edition of its influential list of authors of highly cited papers, released in November 2023.”

Analyzing the Scam. Catanzaro writes, “The startling new analysis is the work of Domingo Docampo, a mathematician at the University of Vigo with a long-standing interest in university ranking systems. Over the past few years, Docampo had noticed that Clarivate’s list of highly cited researchers (HCRs) was gradually being taken over by lesser known mathematicians. ‘There were people that published in journals that no serious mathematician reads, whose work was cited by articles that no serious mathematicians would read, coming from institutions that nobody knows in mathematics,’ he says. So he decided to delve into Clarivate’s data from the past 15 years to explore exactly which universities were publishing highly cited papers and who was citing them.”

Who’s Doing the Scam?  Catanzaro recounts, “Docampo found patterns that suggested citation cartels were at work. Most telling, the citations to the top papers often came from researchers at the same institution as the cited paper’s authors.”

Hmm… To quote Henry David Thoreau: “Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find trout in the milk.” 

“For instance,” Catanzaro says, “between 2021 and 2023, two prolific publishers of highly cited papers—China Medical University and King Abdul Aziz University, which boasted 66 top papers in that period—each also published hundreds of studies referencing highly cited papers. The studies that referenced highly cited papers were also regularly published in predatory journals, Docampo found, where rogue citation practices may be more easily accepted.”

“This can only be condemned,” says Helge Holden, chair of the Abel Prize committee, one of the most prestigious awards in math. ds

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2024