Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of Editor Behavior through Potentially Coercive Citations

TL;DR

This study investigates whether editors of high-impact journals benefit from potentially coercive citations that artificially inflate their personal citation metrics, highlighting ethical concerns and the need for awareness.

Contribution

It provides the first empirical analysis of coercive citation practices at the individual editor level within a well-ranked journal.

Findings

Editors benefiting from coercive citations show increased h-index post-appointment.

Control group editors do not exhibit significant citation increases.

The study covers citation patterns from 1975 to 2015.

Abstract

How much is the h-index of an editor of a well ranked journal improved due to citations which occur after his or her appointment? Scientific recognition within academia is widely measured nowadays by the number of citations or h-index. Our dataset is based on a sample of four editors from a well ranked journal (impact factor - IF - greater than 2). The target group consists of two editors who seem to benefit by their position through an increased citation number (and subsequently h-index) within journal. The total amount of citations for the target group is bigger than 600. The control group is formed by another set of two editors from the same journal whose relations between their positions and their citation records remain neutral. The total amount of citations for the control group is more than 1200. The timespan for which pattern of citations has been studied is 1975-2015. Previous coercive citations for a journal benefit (increase its IF) has been signaled. To the best of our knowledge, this is a pioneering work on coercive citations for personal (or editors) benefit. Editorial teams should be aware about this type of potentially unethical behavior and act accordingly.