Scientific literature depends on the integrity of its references. Each reference implicitly asserts that a verifiable source exists and supports the claims being made. When references point to non-existent studies, readers, reviewers, and policy makers are unable to evaluate the evidence.
Fabricated citations: an audit across 2·5 million biomedical papers
Scientific literature depends on the integrity of its references. Each reference implicitly asserts that a verifiable source exists and supports the claims being made. When references point to non-existent studies, readers, reviewers, and policy makers are unable to evaluate the evidence.
Fabricated Citations — CITADEL
4,046 fabricated citations in the biomedical literature. A more than 12× rise in three years. Verified across PubMed, Crossref, OpenAlex, Google Scholar.
Fraudulent citations, blamed on AI hallucinations, are becoming more common in research papers
“Fabricated” citations that do not reference real academic papers are spreading in the literature, polluting the public record of science, a new study found
White House Health Report Included Fake Citations (Published 2025)
A report on children’s health released by the Make America Healthy Again Commission referred to scientific papers that did not exist.
Hallucinated citations are polluting the scientific literature. What can be done?
Tens of thousands of publications from 2025 might include invalid references generated by AI, a Nature analysis suggests.
Hallucinated citations are polluting the scientific literature. What can be done?
Tens of thousands of publications from 2025 might include invalid references generated by AI, a Nature analysis suggests.
Hallucinated citations are polluting the scientific literature. What can be done?
Tens of thousands of publications from 2025 might include invalid references generated by AI, a Nature analysis suggests.
“Paging Dr. Fraud”: The Fake Publishers That Are Ruining Science
For years, spurious journals have proliferated online, promising academic credibility in exchange for cash.
Quotation errors in general science journals
Due to the incremental nature of scientific discovery, scientific writing requires extensive referencing to the writings of others. The accuracy of this referencing is vital, yet errors do occur. These errors are called ‘quotation errors’. This paper presents the first assessment of quotation errors in high-impact general science journals. A total of 250 random citations were examined. The propositions being cited were compared with the referenced materials to verify whether the propositions could be substantiated by those materials. The study found a total error rate of 25%. This result tracks well with error rates found in similar studies in other academic fields. Additionally, several suggestions are offered that may help to decrease these errors and make similar studies more feasible in the future.
Incorrect Citation Association for Articles in Online-Only Springer Nature Journals
We show that citation metrics of journal articles in many of the online-only Springer Nature journals and associated ones are distorted, going back to articles from 2001. We find that most likely due to an API response error, there are many incorrect references which typically lead to Article Number 1 of a given Volume. Among others, the issue affects journals such as Scientific Reports, Nature Communications, Communications journals, Cell Death & Disease, Light: Science & Applications, as well as many BMC, Discovery and npj journals. Beyond the negative effect of introducing incorrect reference information, this distorts the citation statistics of articles in these journals, with a few articles being massively over-cited compared to their peers, while many lose citations; e.g. both in Scientific Reports and in Nature Communications, 5 of the 10 top cited articles have article numbers of 1. We validate the distorted statistics by assessing data from multiple scientific literature databases: Crossref, OpenCitations, Semantic Scholar, and the journals' websites. The issue primarily arises from the inconsistent transition from page-based referencing of articles to article number-based referencing, as well as the improper handling of the change in the publisher's article metadata API. It seems that the most pressing problem has been present since approximately 2011, which we estimate affects the citation count of millions of authors.
Quotation errors in general science journals
Abstract. Due to the incremental nature of scientific discovery, scientific writing requires extensive referencing to the writings of others. The accuracy
Are Scientific Papers Bad?
