Selbstverständlich lassen sich nicht nur Follower auf sozialen Medien kaufen, sondern auch Zitationen auf Google Scholar.

In this study, we analyze over 1.6 million Google Scholar profiles and identify instances of citation manipulation to boost an author’s citation metrics. In many cases, this was done through a previously undocumented practice of “citation purchasing”, where an author pays a small fee to a third party company which provides citations to the author in bulk. We confirm that this practice is possible by purchasing citations to a fictional author. This type of manipulation is of particular concern due to Google Scholar’s wide-spread use in scientist evaluation processes, which we confirm with a survey of faculty from top-ranked universities. Our findings bring to light new forms of citation manipulation and emphasize the need to look beyond citation counts.

Citations are widely considered in scientists’ evaluation. As such, scientists may be incentivized to inflate their citation counts. While previous literature has examined self-citations and citation cartels, it remains unclear whether scientists can purchase citations. Here, we compile a dataset of ∼1.6 million profiles on Google Scholar to examine instances of citation fraud on the platform. We survey faculty at highly-ranked universities, and confirm that Google Scholar is widely used when evaluating scientists. Intrigued by a citationboosting service that we unravelled during our investigation, we contacted the service while undercover as a fictional author, and managed to purchase 50 citations. These findings provide conclusive evidence that citations can be bought in bulk, and highlight the need to look beyond citation counts.