Scentific Cartels gaming the system
 

https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/13/...rtels-science/
Gaming the system, scientific ‘cartels’ band together to cite each others’ work

Ivan Oransky @ivanoransky and Adam Marcus @armarcus


They’re not the kind of gangs that smuggle drugs and murder people. But people looking closely at the scientific literature have discovered that a small number of scientists are part of a different kind of cartel — ones that band together to reference each other’s work, gaming the citation system to make their studies appear to be more important and worthy of attention.

These so-called citation cartels have been around for decades, as the publishing consultant Phil Davis has pointed out. Thomson Reuters, which until recently owned the Impact Factor for ranking journals, has even sanctioned periodicals for evidence of cartel behavior.

Davis, who clearly has an eye for this kind of thing, unearthed a citation cartel a few years back when he came across a 2010 article in Medical Science Monitor with a glaring feature: Of its 490 references, 445 were to articles in an emerging medical journal called Cell Transplantation. Of the rest, 44 were to papers in … Medical Science Monitor. Davis also noticed this: “Three of the four authors of this paper sit on the editorial board of Cell Transplantation. Two are associate editors, one is the founding editor. The fourth is the CEO of a medical communications company.”



That wasn’t a one-off. Davis found similar cases involving the same authors. In 2012, Thomson Reuters sanctioned three of the four publications involved by denying them Impact Factors. The firm did the same to six business journals in 2014.

It is not uncommon.. I call it circle the wagon or circular references. It used to just be with younger scientists at lower quality journals.. but the pressure to produce is so high these days, more and more budding ones are doing it. Basically the peer review system is running out of people to police frauds properly.

I would caution though, once you get yourself involved in one, it might get you better stats, but your handiwork will play a factor when you apply for academic jobs. Like cheating in everything else it will come back and bite you eventually. Doesn't take much to put your name in search engine and see your name connected to shoddy work for perpetuity.

lol is this like a link exchange for SEO'ing a medical journal?
time to set up some 301 redirects and PBNs lol