M A L I B U R O H W A N I

F I N A L P R E S E N T A T I O N

Coercive Citation : Cite my paper or else

What is coercive citation

Coercive citation is a malpractice in academic publishing wherein an editor of a scientific journal approached and coerced authors to add unwarranted citations to articles before the editor will agree to publish it.

Why editors coerce citations?

Journal editors want to increase the citations of their journals, because it raises the journal’s impact factor and ranking, which is a prestige.

Some Facts

A paper in Science in 2012 by Wilhite and Fong indicated that about 20% of academics working in economics, sociology, psychology, and multiple business disciplines have experienced coercive citation

How they do it?

“you cite This Journal only once in your 40 references. Consequently, we kindly ask you to add references of articles published in This Journal to your present article”.

My research

Coercive citation can also be practiced by as an individual serving as editor or reviewer for a journal with the aim to boost one’s own citations.

This type of coercive citation has never been studied at a micro-level on individual.

Failure to recognize this trend is likely to cause an underestimation of the breadth of practice in this topic.

Researching an individual does however provide a good understanding of the overall trend of publication and citation.

Methods

Subject: an individual who is well known anecdotally on the World Wide Web in practicing self-citation.

Nelson Tansu is a Professor of Electrical Engineering who is well known to have a very high self-citation (60% according to a study)

Inclination, publication and citation numbers and patterns were searched and subsequently recovered from a research database Scopus.

Subject

Results

Improper but Tenacious Coercive Citation by N. Tansu is evident and

compelling There are a number of factors that can be used in

order to narrow down the potential citation anomaly.

(1) As editors of journals

N. Tansu is assoiate editors for 3 journals, particularly:

IEEE OSA JOURNAL OF DISPLAY TECHNOLOGY Optical Materials Express IEEE Photonics Journal The position held as an Associate Editor allows one

to solicit and importune the authors into citing the editor’s papers. This is evident as most of the citations of the subject came from the above-mentioned 3 journals.

Evidence from citations

Premise: If coercive citation is to occur, the citations to the subject should come mainly from the mentioned-above 3 journals.

In 2012, Tansu acquired 621 citations, which came from 204 articles, meaning each article are on average gave 3 citations. However, the top references came from:

Optical Materials Express (17 references) , IEEE Photonics Journal (16 references)

In Jan-May 2013, Tansu obtained 685 citations, which is very high considering it is only 5 months and more citations than previous whole year. The citations came from 158 articles, meaning each article is on average gave 4 citations. However, the top references came from:

IEEE OSA Journal of Display Technology (37 references) , Optical Materials Express (11 references), IEEE Photonics Journal (5 references)

Evidence from individual papers

Premise: If coercive citation is to occur, the citations to the individual papers of the subject should come mainly from the mentioned-above 3 journals.

Zhao H., Liu G., Zhang J., Poplawsky J.D., Dierolf V., Tansu N. Approaches for high internal quantum efficiency green InGaN light-emitting diodes with large overlap quantum wells. 2011, Optics Express, (14)

This paper has 160 citations. Tansu himself has 17 self-citations, but the rest of citations come from

33 citations are from IEEE OSA Journal of Display Technology 20 citations are from Optical Materials Express 8 citations are from IEEE Photonics Journal The subject gained 61 citations by coercing other authors to cite this

paper.

Evidence from individual papers

Zhao H., Liu G., Arif R.A., Tansu N. Current injection efficiency induced efficiency-droop in InGaN quantum well light-emitting diodes. 2010, Solid-State Electronics, (10) 1119-1124

This paper has 89 citations, Tansu himself has 25 self citations, 25 citations are from IEEE OSA Journal of Display Technology 12 citations are from IEEE Photonics Journal 5 citations are from Optical Materials Express The subject profited 42 citations from being editors of the 3

journals. All citations came from articles from Asian counties (Taiwan, China,

Korea and Singapore). These examples not unexpectedly showed that the subject has

gained moe than 50% of citations from being editors.

Evidence through references in journals

Premise: If coercive citation is manifested, the number of references to the subject (Tansu) should be huge compared to other authors. Anomaly in references should be detected.

Citations in IEEE OSA JOURNAL OF DISPLAY TECHNOLOGY

In Jan-May 2013, the journal has 115 articles Tansu is the top author with 6 papers 1410 References were cited by the 115 articles. Top on the cited list is Nakamura, S. (with 45 citations) an obvious one. (Shuji

Nakamura is the inventor of the blue LED, a major breakthrough in lighting technology.)

But second on the list is Tansu with 43 references. In 2012, the journal has 123 articles As Tansu was not an editor at the time, he didn't publish a single article in the

journal. 1787 References were cited by the 123 articles. But Tansu cannot be found in any of the references. This is an anomaly, in 2013 references to Tansu jump from 0 to 43.By becoming an

editor, the subject can benefit and crown the citation list of IEEE OSA JOURNAL OF DISPLAY TECHNOLOGY.

Citations in Optical Materials Express

In Jan-May 2013, the journal has published 54 articles. Tansu didn't publish any paper. 1534 References were cited by the 54 articles. Number one on the list is Tansu, with 25 references.

In 2012, the journal has 202 articles Tansu didn't publish any paper. In the 5094 References that were cited by the 202 articles, Tansu shared 25

references.

In 2011, the journal has 170 articles. Tansu didn't publish any paper. In the 4294 References that were cited by the 202 articles, Tansu shared 12

references.

Every year the number of citations to Tansu increases showing the anomaly, especially in 2013, Tansu is the top cited references.

Citations in IEEE Photonics Journal

In Jan-May 2013, the journal has 93 articles Tansu published 6 papers In the 2261 References that were cited by the 93 articles, Tansu is on the top list with 23 references In 2012, the journal has 264 articles Tansu has 2 papers In the 5459 References that were cited by the 264 articles, Tansu shared 37 references. In 2011, the journal has 170 articles Tansu didn't publish any paper In the 2634 References that were cited by the 114 selected articles, Tansu shared 13 references. This trend is not observed in other journals in the same field: IEEE Photonics

Technology Letters, Applied Physics Letters, Optics Express, Applied Optics. In other words the subject cannot be found

(2) A Guest Editor for a Special Issue

If one is selected as a guest editor for a Special Issue, one can coerced all papers to cite one’s papers. The subject was a guest editor for IEEE OSA Journal of Display Technology in Volume 9, Issue 4 (April 2013).

The special issue that feature Recent advances in solid state lighting turns out to be Advancing Tansu citations

A Guest Editor for a Special Issue

Premise: If coercive citation is manifested, the number of citations to the subject (Tansu) should occur on every paper in the special issue and should be huge compared to other authors. Anomaly in references should be detected.

Examples

Effects of H2 in GaN barrier spacer layer of InGaN/GaN multiple quantum-well light-emitting diodes. Lai, W.-C., Yang, Y.-Y. 2013

10 citations to Tansu Investigating the effect of piezoelectric polarization on GaN-based LEDs with

different quantum barrier thickness. Wang, C.K., Chiang, T.H., Chen, K.Y., Chiou, Y.Z., Lin, T.K., Chang, S.P., Chang, S.J.

9 citations to Tansu Lateral current spreading effect on the efficiency droop in GaN based light-emitting

diodes. Huang, S., Fan, B., Chen, Z., Zheng, Z., Luo, H., Wu, Z., Wang, G., Jiang, H. 8 citations to Tansu Effect of polarization-matched n-type AlGaInN electron-blocking layer on the

optoelectronic properties of blue InGaN light-emitting diodes. Li, Y., Gao, Y., He, M., Zhou, J., Lei, Y., Zhang, L., Zhu, K., Chen, Y.

11 citations to Tansu Analysis of internal quantum efficiency and current injection efficiency in III-nitride

light-emitting diodes. Zhao, H., Liu, G., Zhang, J., Arif, R.A., Tansu, N. 16 citations to Tansu

A Guest Editor for a Special Issue

All 18 papers have 6-16 citations to Tansu, and noticed all papers are from China, Taiwan and Singapore where an editor can easily coerced the authors.

The only paper that escaped is by Feezell and Shuji Nakamura, a well-known authority in InGaN LED.

This is in accordance with the research by Wilhite and Fong that many journal editors appear to strategically target certain authors, such as assistant and associate professors (from Asian countries), rather than full professors (Nakamura), relying on the fact that lower ranking authors may be more willing to add the unnecessary citations.

Evidence

Citation manipulation is observed. The subject gained more than 160 citations from a single journal edition, thanks to IEEE OSA Journal of Display Technology.

The excessive citations to Tansu in the papers are not necessary and essentially superfluous.

Take an example the paper by Zhang et al. On the Effect of Step-Doped Quantum Barriers in InGaN/GaN Light Emitting Diodes:

“For that, staggered InGaN quantum wells have been proposed and investigated [16]–[20].” “ …, therefore increasing the radiative recombination rates [23]–[26]”

References [16] -[20] and [23]–[26] are all papers by Tansu.

Conclusions

Considering all this valuable information, my study suggests that citation solicitation and coercion by an individual (N. Tansu) is a phenomenon, and is a conundrum.

This finding is backed up by solid data from citations of the subject and in journals.

Coercive citation is primarily targeting vulnerable younger researchers from Asian countries as publishing in a journal is a critical consideration for an author.

This behavior is in order to have the greatest effect on the citation of an individual that is opportunistic. This case study showed that an editor gained 160 citations from just a single special issue in a journal.

Recommendation

If left unimpeded, it could distort our understanding of scientific quality and research impact and, over many occasions, disquiet pronouncements about tenure, promotion, awards and funding.

We should stop using citation volume, h index, impact factor and innovate. H index and Impact factor is like a self-fulfilling prophecy that tends to transform the academia in a competition game among scholar and journals.

Thank You