Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2017 13:58:12 -0700

Saw on LJ's invariably interesting InfoDocket, validating that if you
give people an incentive to do something, some will do it:

“Authorship and Citation Manipulation in Academic Research” in PLOS:
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0187394

Abstract:
Some scholars add authors to their research papers or grant proposals
even when those individuals contribute nothing to the research effort.
Some journal editors coerce authors to add citations that are not
pertinent to their work and some authors pad their reference lists
with superfluous citations. How prevalent are these types of
manipulation, why do scholars stoop to such practices, and who among
us is most susceptible to such ethical lapses? This study builds a
framework around how intense competition for limited journal space and
research funding can encourage manipulation and then uses that
framework to develop hypotheses about who manipulates and why they do
so. We test those hypotheses using data from over 12,000 responses to
a series of surveys sent to more than 110,000 scholars from eighteen
different disciplines spread across science, engineering, social
science, business, and health care. We find widespread misattribution
in publications and in research proposals with significant variation
by academic rank, discipline, sex, publication history, co-authors,
etc. Even though the majority of scholars disapprove of such tactics,
many feel pressured to make such additions while others suggest that
it is just the way the game is played. The findings suggest that
certain changes in the review process might help to stem this ethical
decline, but progress could be slow.

Jim O'Donnell
ASU