The modern scientific community is faced with a new problem – manipulations with metadan, aimed at an artificial increase in the number of citation. The problem became the object of investigation of scientists who revealed a mechanism of hidden increase in citation through the so-called “dummy links”.
Quoting in scientific work follows strict standards: each link includes the name, the names of the authors, the year of publication, the name of the magazine or conference, and page numbers. Such information is stored as metadata, not visible in the text of the article, but are assigned to a unique digital identifier (DOI). Links in scientific publications allow authors to justify the choice of methodology or present the results of previous studies, emphasizing the iterative and joint nature of science.
However, in the process of research, it was found that some unscrupulous authors add additional links invisible in the text but present in metadata articles. As a result, the number of citations for some researchers or magazines increases sharply, although links are not actually cited in the articles themselves.
Investigation began with POSTA on the Pubpeer website, where scientists discuss and analyze publications. The author of the publication noted the inconsistency: the article in the Hindawi magazine, which he suspected of fraud due to unnatural phrases, had much more citation than the load, which is extremely unusual.
The authors of the article moved away from the established terms, which confused scientists. This is usually the case due to an attempt to avoid anti-plagiarism with the help of software for paraphrasing.
A sample of an article that is given in the post Pubpeer
Post attracted attention several researchers. With the help of scientific search engines, scientists have found articles quoting the original article. Google Scholar did not find a single link, and Crossref and Dimensions found them. The difference is that Google Scholar mainly relies on the text of the article to extract links, while Cross