Research Misconduct and Citation Gaming: A Critical Review on Characterization and Recent Trends of Research Manipulation

Research integrity is under threat. Apart from traditional research malpractices that include fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism, recent reports reflect intentionally biased citations and other complex malpractices to inflate impact factors mutually (excessive self-cites, citation stacking, cartels, cabals, and rings). Such journals are blacklisted annually by Thomson Reuters firm since 2009. This paper highlights and categorizes all possible cases of research misconduct. It creates awareness and an urgent need to introduce new monitoring and evaluation standards based on advanced computational intelligence techniques. Further, existing metrics need to be redefined, traditionally based upon citation and publication count as key quantifiers.