
The “phantom reference”: How a made-up article got almost 400 citations (2017) - DanielleMolloy
http://retractionwatch.com/2017/11/14/phantom-reference-made-article-got-almost-400-citations/
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yesenadam
From Rota's _Ten Lessons I wish I had been Taught_ :

"8\. Give lavish acknowledgments

I have always felt miffed after reading a paper in which I felt I was not
being given proper credit, and it is safe to conjecture that the same happens
to everyone else. One day, I tried an experiment. After writing a rather long
paper, I began to draft a thorough bibliography. On the spur of the moment, I
decided to cite a few papers which had nothing whatsoever to do with the
content of my paper, to see what might happen.

Somewhat to my surprise, I received letters from two of the authors whose
papers I believed were irrelevant to my article. Both letters were written in
an emotionally charged tone. Each of the authors warmly congratulated me for
being the first to acknowledge their contribution to the field."

[http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~cahn/life/gian-carlo-
rota-10-le...](http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~cahn/life/gian-carlo-
rota-10-lessons.html)

~~~
lostlogin
The flip side of this - helping with some stuff that the authors weren’t well
versed in and then getting acknowledged for some really trivial work. I’ve
liked it but it didn’t deserve any credit.

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alephnil
> It was a “phantom reference” that had been created merely to illustrate
> Elsevier’s desired reference format.

I think that explains a lot. Some authors cut and paste the reference into
their document to have an example, and then forget to remove it before they
submit the paper. Then the reviewers don't notice or do not remark it in their
review report, and it get published.

I did a very similar error myself when I was including the price of a book I
cited as part of its title, and this passed through review without notice.
This paper was part of my doctoral dissertation, and while none of the
opponents made a remark, the institute leader that otherwise was in a
completely different field and probably read only the citations did notice.
During the "questions from the audience" session, he asked why I did that,
which caused a bit of amusement.

~~~
sago
There should be a distinct difference then between whether the paper is only
referenced in the bibliography, or whether it is also cited.

I wonder how many of the papers actually cite the article? An article that is
only referenced is pretty meaningless. Like a function that is implemented but
never called. Or should be. Perhaps the problem is the way indexers assume
references equal citations.

To continue yesterday's interesting discussion of Latex, references should not
appear unless they are cited. I used to use a huge master bibliography for
everything, and assumed that Bib/Latex would sort out the things I actually
cited.

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gerdesj
Ok, so I write "The art of writing a scientific article." and change my name
to Van der Geer. Publishing it eight years ago may take some faking but 400
citations out of the box.

Now: _that's_ karma whoring ...

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sevensor
I once proposed a conference paper and had to withdraw it. Nonetheless, a
citation shows up in Google Scholar, and researchgate keeps asking me to
confirm authorship. I can't figure out how to get them to stop.

Edit: I just checked, and my nonexistant paper now has two citations,
according to Google Scholar!

~~~
gweinberg
Assuming someone got ahold of a preprint, it could be appropriate to cite it
even if the paper was withdrawn, right?

~~~
sevensor
There was no preprint -- it didn't get that far! I'd only submitted an
abstract. The citations are based on that alone.

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airstrike
Title is a bit clickbaity... From the article:

> “most citations to the phantom reference occurred in fairly low-quality
> conference papers,” and were written by authors with poor English.

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CM30
Something similar happens quite a bit with news reporting. Someone references
a non existent story online, then a whole bunch of journalists and media
outlets assume it's real based on the 'source' link/text.

Saw it with a story about a game Niantic Labs was supposedly working on, all
based on a non existent IGN story that linked to an error page.

But it's depressing to see something like this happen with journals and what
not. Would have thought these academics would be a bit better at checking
their sources than this.

~~~
anitil
I swear I've gotten stuck in reference loops online before. A cites B who
cites C who cites A again. Not sure how it could happen.

~~~
CM30
Yeah, that's definitely a thing. It's especially common with wikis like
Wikipedia, where the wiki article ends up being quoted in the press, which
then end up as references for the wiki article etc:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_reporting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_reporting)

Edit: Wikipedia also calls it 'citogenesis':

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_citogenesis_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_citogenesis_incidents)

~~~
anitil
Ooooh nice find! Thanks!

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gtrubetskoy
There was a fascinating Defcon 26 talk on "predatory publishing" which may
explain how this kind of thing happens:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ras_VYgA77Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ras_VYgA77Q)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_open-
access_publishi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_open-
access_publishing)

~~~
eesmith
From the article, "It was a “phantom reference” that had been created merely
to illustrate Elsevier’s desired reference format." and "nearly 90% of the
citations were for conference proceedings papers, and nearly two-thirds of
these appeared in Procedia conference volumes, which are published by
Elsevier."

Thus, it is unlikely to be due to predatory publishing.

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broahmed
Was taking forever to load for me. In case others are having trouble, here's a
cached version:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:fZ-W5g...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:fZ-W5ghSNWcJ:https://retractionwatch.com/2017/11/14/phantom-
reference-made-article-got-almost-400-citations/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

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jononor
Journals don't use tools that check citation validity?

~~~
lallysingh
That's not a nice word for reviewers!

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SubiculumCode
Fake publications get cited in fake journals. Nothing to see here. Stop the
needless science bashing. Every scientist here knows how much fake journal
spam we get in our emails every day. It is an industry. That industry is not
science. It is spam. And frankly, people read this kinf od headline, think
science is fake, corrupt, and stupid and get in their SUVs and let the world
turn into an oven. OK I am ranting.

~~~
eesmith
Procedia isn't a fake journal. There is no science bashing in the linked-to
article. This isn't about fake journal spam. It's about people who
accidentally leave an example citation in their citation list.

