Citation cartels boost rankings of mathematicians – Analysis

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colleagues’ citation counts by churning out low-quality papers that repeatedly reference their work, according to an unpublished analysis, writes Michele Catanzaro for Science.

As a result, their universities – some of which do not appear to have maths departments – now produce a greater number of highly cited maths papers each year than schools with a strong track record in the field, such as Stanford and Princeton universities. These so-called ‘citation cartels’ appear to be trying to improve their universities’ rankings, according to experts in publication practices. In response to such practices, the publishing analytics company Clarivate has excluded the entire field of maths from the most recent edition of its influential list of authors of highly cited papers, released in November 2023.

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 was gradually being taken over by lesser-known mathematicians.
Full report on the Science site