From citation metrics to citation ethics: Critical examination of a highly-cited 2017 moth pheromone paper

• Published in: Scientometrics Vol. 129; no. 1; pp. 693 - 703
• Main Authors: da Silva, Jaime A. Teixeira, Vickers, Neil J., Nazarovets, Serhii
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cham Springer International Publishing 2024; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Biology; Butterflies & moths; Computer Science; Information Storage and Retrieval; Insects; Library Science; Citations for sale; Authors’ rights; Academic publishing; Paper mills; Google Scholar; Citation manipulation
• ISSN: 0138-9130; 1588-2861
• DOI: 10.1007/s11192-023-04855-7

In this letter, we focus on a very curious and bibliometrically important case of a 2017 moth pheromone paper published in Cell Press’
Current Biology
that has already accumulated over 1600 Google Scholar-based citations within the past 4 years (i.e., since 2020) to appreciate whether all those citations are valid, i.e., within thematic scope, or whether a portion of those citations might be invalid, and which we colloquially refer to herein as “unwanted citations”. Our investigation assessed Scopus-based data (1088 citations on 10 August 2023). In addition to creating a SciVal thematic profile, which indicated a wide diversity of topics of papers citing the 2017 paper, a manual screen revealed only one paper that was directly thematically relevant to the topic of insect reproductive biology. The remaining > 99% of citations, or “unwanted citations”, are invalid. To reflect a valid state of scientific truthfulness, those papers should be corrected to reflect that citation abuse has taken place.