Gaming the System? Testing the Ability to Artificially Generate Academic Citations Through Incentive-Based Promotion

Jason Miklian

SSRN Working Paper, 2018

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This SSRN Working Paper by Jason Miklian (2018) examines the integrity of academic citation metrics and whether research can artificially manipulate citation counts through incentive-based promotional strategies. It is part of Jason Miklian's broader research program on research integrity at the University of Oslo.

Key Messages

  • Academic citation metrics are vulnerable to manipulation, since incentive-based promotional strategies can artificially inflate the citation counts that measure scholarly impact.
  • Testing whether citation counts can be artificially inflated exposes weaknesses in the integrity of research evaluation metrics.
  • Incentive-driven promotion of work raises the prospect that citation-based measures of impact can be gamed.

Research Topics

academic citations gaming metrics research integrity

Citation

Jason Miklian. "Gaming the System? Testing the Ability to Artificially Generate Academic Citations Through Incentive-Based Promotion." SSRN Working Paper, 2018.

Related Research Areas

BibTeX Citation
@article{miklian2018_gaming_the_system,
  title = {Gaming the System? Testing the Ability to Artificially Generate Academic Citations Through Incentive-Based Promotion},
  author = {Miklian, Jason},
  journal = {SSRN Working Paper},
  year = {2018},
  url = {https://papers.ssrn.com}
}