Citation Scamming

  Below is a series of email back-and-forths that illustrates a nasty academic
scam; one that I'm afraid  is becoming increasingly common.  Let me introduce 
this game by outlining it in abstract form before giving the concrete example. 

   It all begins with a small group of academic colleagues in the same field deciding 
to start a journal in their discipline and use trickery to build it into a "high-impact" one, 
while at the same time building up their own personal "citation impact factors". They may
first give their journal a name similar to (and easily mistaken for) an established journal, 
and then they find some publisher to handle it. They play their game by writing many
short articles with interesting titles but that are either almost without new content, or
that rehash some old and well-known material. They submit these papers to their own 
new journal, and since they are not only the authors, but are also the editors and the
referees, these papers are of course accepted. And here is the punch-line; all of these
papers cite a great many of the other articles printed in this journal, as well as their own 
papers and those of other members of this clique that are published in other journals. 
Needless to say, more often than not, these citations are fake, in that the cited articles 
have little or no relevance to the (anyway minimal) content of the citing paper. Slowly 
at first, but then more and more rapidly (because of the positive feedback in the way 
that citation index factors are calculated), their journal and they themselves rise into the 
"high-impact" realm.  They themselves are quickly promoted and get high-paying outside
offers, and their journal may be snapped up by a famous scientific publishing house, 
perhaps even the same one that publishes the established journal with a similar name.
If this sounds unbelievable, just read on to see a real live example. 

-------------------

Dear Vreni:
I agree with you that "we should continue to behave seriously and to have contact only 
with people who want to be serious and honest".

There are remaining a few problems with SPRINGER however (which I briefly describe):

I begin by enclosing a letter from R.P.
........A few years ago, when I first heard that there was an Indian journal with nearly the same name as JFPTA 
I was surprised and more than a little worried about the possibility of confusion it represented.
 I think I mentioned it in a message to the editorial board, but I didn't see any easy solution. This is the first I have 
heard that Springer took over our Indian Doppelganger. That they did it at all seems strange,and that the did it 
without a major name change seems unbelievably stupid.  I think we should request that SPRINGER corrects its 
error and ask Editors of FPTA to major name change of their journal (for example to "Metric Fixed Point Theory")

Best Regards,
Andrzej

===============================================

  On Sat, Mar 2, 2013 at 12:59 PM, Andrzej Granas

(i) There exist 4 journals related to Fixed Point Theory
 
 (I) JOURNAL OF FIXED POINT THEORY AND APPLICATIONS  (Birkhauser)
 (II) FIXED POINT THEORY AND APPLICATIONS  (Hindawi and Springer)
 (III) JP JOURNAL OF FIXED POINT THEORY (The Pushpa Publishing House,India) (Since 2006)
 (IV) FIXED POINT THEORY Edited by Department of Mathematics, University Cluj-Napoca
       ROMANIA (Since 2003)

 (ii) Springer is sponsoring two journals with almost the same tittle: 
          FPTA with recent Impact Factor  =   2,49 and  
         JFPTA with recent   Impact Factor   =  0.56
 
(iii) While in JFPTA one needs to control the excessive number of citations, in FPTA the large number 
      of citations is welcomed in order to increase the Impact Factor.
 
(iv) FPTA is edited by Ravi Agarval      <http://www.spinelas.uac.pt/Agarwal_CV.pdf> 
 who has published :  
     (a)  24 monographs ,  
      (b) over 1000 research papers (in 82 different journals),and 
      (c)  refereed more than 2500 papers

 (v)   He is at the same time is the Editor of three other SPRINGER journals:
     1.Advances in Difference Equations (Impact Factor 0,85)
     2.Boundary Value Problems (Impact Factor 0,91)
     3.Journal of Inequalities and Applications (Impact Factor 0,73)

 He has raised successfully IMPACT FACTOR in each of these journals to the higher level than the Impact Factor of JFPTA.

============================================================================================

 INFORMATION about FPTA:
 Over the last few years the following mathematicians have left the Editorial Board of FPTA:
 Hélène Frankowska, Klaus Schmitt, William A. Kirk, V. Lakshmikantham, Andrzej Szulkin,
Roger D. Nussbaum, Jean Mawhin , Evelyn Hart , Jonathan M. Borwein, Hichem Ben El Mechaiekh

=============================================================================================

 Some letters:
 (i) From Michael C.
 Dear Andrzej,..........................I have looked more carefully at some recent FPTA articles, including one 
joint article by Agarwal published this month. It does seem to me that you could have included many of 
the results as exercises in the first few pages of your Fixed Point Theory. I may write to you again on that, 
with more precision.
 Best wishes,
 Michael

> ====================================================================
> (ii) From Andrzej S.

 Dear Andrzej,
 I became involved with FPTA after a request from Agarwal. I do not think very highly of this 
gentleman as a mathematician, to put it mildly, but it was difficult to turn him down in this situation.
 I received many articles on metric fixed point theory with a request to find reviewers. Given that I 
don’t have many contacts in this milieu, I had some difficulties in finding reviewers, and the articles 
themselves, as far as I could tell, were generally of very poor quality. I wrote to Agarwal, that I would 
prefer if he sent me articles in my field of competence, and as he refused, I decided that it made no 
sense to continue in this vain and I resigned, despite his pleas that I stay. As far as I remember 
(but I could be wrong), the letters accepting submissions that Agarwal send to contributors always 
included a request that the authors add articles that had been published in FPTA to their bibliography.

   In the matter of which you write, unfortunately, the problem of artificially upping citations (either one’s 
own or a journal’s) is becoming increasingly common. It seems to me that an editor accepting an article 
after its positive review should, in warranted cases, ask the reviewer what he thinks of this. A propos 
various interesting practices, see J. Math. Anal. Appl. 398 (2013), p. 455:

       “This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief. A referee’s report on which 
the editorial decision was made was found to be falsified. The referee’s report was submitted under 
the name of an established scientist who was not aware of the paper or the report, via a fictitious EES 
account. Because of the submission of a fake, but well-written and positive referee’s report, the Editor 
was misled into accepting the paper based upon the positive advice of what he assumed was a well 
known expert in the field. This represents a clear violation of the fundamentals of the peer-review process, 
our publishing policies, and publishing ethics standards.”

   It seems to me that the problem arises from the fact that more and more journals demand that contributors 
provide a list of potential reviewers. I don’t like this one bit, even if this is also practiced by a number of fine j
ournals.
 
With kind regads,
Andrzej

> (iii) Letter from Ronald G.

> Dear Andrzej,
> I can hardly believe what I am seeing with this JFPTA and FPTA and to
> think that Springer is involved in this scam. It is easy to confuse the
> two journals. I must say, though, from the title of the articles in the
> FPTA, I can hardly believe that anyone reads it. Those look like rather
> uninteresting articles to me. On the other hand, someone who is
> unsuspecting could easily confuse the two journals. I am also shocked
> that Springer publishes essentially both journals. You would think that
> they had better sense.
> I am not sure what can be done about this, though. There are always
> people out there who will be involved in such things. I wonder if Donel
> O'Regan is part of this. It is no wonder that you are having problems
> wih Springer. Still, I think that a journal like this will die, that is,
> one like FPTA. The only ones interested are close friends of the editors
> and that is not enough.
> Yours, Ron

> (iv) Letter to and from Tadeusz Iwaniec (Distinguished Professor of at
> Syracuse University):
> Dear Tadeusz,
> Is the exact name of R. Agarwal, whom you mention in your description
> as having placed your name in an article (whose co-author you were not)
> Ravi Agarwal? I am asking because Ravi Agarwal is presently Chief
> Editor of the journal entitled FIXED POINT THEORY AND APPLICATIONS and
> he sends to me letters which I do not answer. I would be grateful for any information.
> Sincerely, A. Granas

> ------------------------
> Dear Andrzej,
> Ravi Agarwal is exactly the person I was mentioning as the one
> responsible for this scandal:( see: Story with Elsevier
> This is a strange fellow who wishes to be enmeshed in everything that
> has to do with mathematics, he has about 1200 articles that no one
> reads. I suspect he wants to bear Erdesz's publication record. It's sick.
> Tadeusz

(THE STORY WITH ELZEVIER IS APPENDED AT THE END)

> =============================================================

Andrzej Granas <baragranas@hotmail.com>	
11/8/14to ‪Fon‬, ‪Michael‬, ‪Norman‬, ‪Richard‬, ‪Aleksy‬, ‪Alexander‬, ‪charles‬, ‪Cornet‬, ‪fadell‬, ‪Gencho‬, ‪Gerard‬, ‪Grzegorz‬, ‪jachym‬, ‪jan‬, ‪Kaoru‬, ‪Kung‬, ‪marlene‬, ‪matthias.schwa.‬, ‪Michael‬, ‪nadler‬, ‪nussbaum‬, ‪Robert‬, ‪rudyak‬, ‪Slawomir‬, ‪steinlein‬	

Dear Colleagues,
we are facing the general problem of bibliometric data (including their artificial raising) which is 
very well known, which has been discussed in the community etc. I really have no idea what to 
do with this, except, maybe, directly appealing to Springer, attaching experts opinions.

Aleksy Tralle,
Asso Editor of JFPTA

palais@uci.edu <rspalais@gmail.com>	
11/12/14to ‪tralle‬, ‪Andrzej‬, ‪Fon‬, ‪Michael‬, ‪Norman‬, ‪Richard‬, ‪Alexander‬, ‪benci‬, ‪charles‬, ‪Cornet‬, ‪fadell‬, ‪Gencho‬, ‪Gerard‬, ‪Grzegorz‬, ‪jachym‬, ‪jan‬, ‪Kaoru‬, ‪Kung‬, ‪marlene‬, ‪matthias.schwa.‬, ‪Michael‬, ‪nadler‬, ‪nussbaum‬, ‪Robert‬, ‪rudyak‬	

Basically, I have thrown up my hands in disgust---and with a feeling of helplessness. 
This is not academic publication as I have always known it, but rather a series of totally
unethical and calculated scams meant at self-aggrandizement at the expense of the 
mathematical community as a whole.  

---  Dick Palais

Michael Shub <shub.michael@gmail.com>	
11/14/14to ‪palais‬, ‪tralle‬, ‪Andrzej‬, ‪Fon‬, ‪Michael‬, ‪Norman‬, ‪Richard‬, ‪Alexander‬, ‪benci‬, ‪charles‬, ‪Cornet‬, ‪fadell‬, ‪Gencho‬, ‪Gerard‬, ‪Grzegorz‬, ‪jachym‬, ‪jan‬, ‪Kaoru‬, ‪Kung‬, ‪marlene‬, ‪matthias.schwa.‬, ‪nadler‬, ‪nussbaum‬, ‪Robert‬, ‪rudyak‬	

Is there a way to get the fpta journal out of the citation index listings for abuse of the system? mike

palais@uci.edu <rspalais@gmail.com>	
11/14/14to ‪Michael‬, ‪tralle‬, ‪Andrzej‬, ‪Fon‬, ‪Michael‬, ‪Norman‬, ‪Richard‬, ‪Alexander‬, ‪benci‬, ‪charles‬, ‪Cornet‬, ‪fadell‬, ‪Gencho‬, ‪Gerard‬, ‪Grzegorz‬, ‪jachym‬, ‪jan‬, ‪Kaoru‬, ‪Kung‬, ‪marlene‬, ‪matthias.schwa.‬, ‪nadler‬, ‪nussbaum‬, ‪Robert‬, ‪rudyak‬	

Hi Mike, 

  Good to hear from you .

>... Is there a way to get the fpta journal out of the citation index listings for abuse of the system?

  An excellent idea !

 Jean Mawhin <jean.mawhin@uclouvain.be>	
11/15/14to ‪Andrzej‬, ‪Louis‬, ‪Nina‬, ‪Victor‬, ‪Ron‬, ‪Michael‬, ‪Albert‬, ‪Alexander‬, ‪me‬, ‪Askold‬, ‪dana‬, ‪Theodore‬, ‪John‬, ‪andrzejs‬	

Dear friends,
I absolute agree with the dishonest misuse of the citation index and of the impact factor by some journals and fully share Dick comments. Indeed, even used honestly, those claimed numerical measures of quality had little chance to be meaningful, and it is a pity that almost all funding agencies have imposed their use. In this way, decisions in science policy are more and more taken out of the hands of active scientists.
There is another habit which generalizes now. More and more often, a paper submitted to a journal is immediately refused by the editor-in-chief (or somebody else), without any refereeing process, because it "does not fit with the format of the journal", even if it perfectly does. It could be a coded message telling that the list of references does not contain enough papers published in this journal.
Concerning the suggested solution, which would be an excellent one, I am afraid that it will be difficult to be done practically. I am afraid it would lead to a court procedure. Furthermore, the process will be hardly accepted by the editor Springer. For pure financial reasons, the commercial editing houses are enthusiastic adepts of the numerological religion.
I hardly understand that Springer has accepted a edit a second journal with a title so close to that of JFPTA. And this is not the only case. New journal whose names are small variants of very reputed ones are regularly announced. This also is a source of confusion in evaluating vitae or grand applications.
Best regards
Jean

Mary Ann Guenther <mguenther@comcast.net>	
12/29/14to ‪Andrzej‬, ‪me‬, ‪Jean‬, ‪Norman‬, ‪Albert‬, ‪Michael‬, ‪Aleksy‬, ‪Michael‬, ‪andrzejs‬, ‪Tadeusz‬, ‪Nina‬, ‪Victor‬, ‪Theodore‬, ‪Simeon‬, ‪Alexander‬, ‪Kung‬, ‪Edward‬, ‪Octav‬, ‪dana‬, ‪Roman‬, ‪zvyagin‬	

You may be right, Andrzej, about the idea that all this is money driven and if there is enough money behind something, it will go on.  But I am a bit more optimistic in this case.  Springer right now has a corner on much of the publishing that goes on in the mathematical world.  But there are a number of mathematicians out there and the only way to keep a field going is through quality.  I do not care what the impact numbers are, the JFPTA is a quality journal.  If Springer begins to back second rate journals and books just because of the money, it will lose.  It cannot stay in business.  In fact, from a strictly business standpoint, when it comes to science and mathematics, quality is the final judge, it surpasses dollars and euros and rubles and any other currency that you can think of.  Quality matters.  I truly believe that.  
When journals start to have impact numbers that start to approach or surpass those of the great journals out there like Crelle's Journal, Mathematische Annalen,  the Acta Mathematica, etc., then you know there is a problem with the impact numbers.  Granting agencies may not be aware of the problem at the moment, but they will become aware of the problem.

    Ron

-----

THE STORY WITH ELZEVIER

Tadeusz Iwaniec
Syracuse University - Mathematics

Corrupt practices of Elsevier’s editors In its September 2005 issue, the peer-reviewed Elsevier journal “Computers & Mathematics with
Applications” (CMA, with E. Rodin acting as Editor-in-Chief) published the article of Shusen Ding: “Global Estimates for the Jacobians of Orientation Preserving Mappings, Volume 50, issue 5/6, pages 707—71. It appeared on line in October 8, 2005.
Surprisingly, Shusen Ding included my name as a co-author though I had no part whatsoever in this article. He wrote the entire paper himself and added my name without my permission. He submitted it to CMA and kept it secret from me until October 10, 2005; that is, two days after his paper became available on line. But I saw this publication and examined its content only in November 19, 2005, through an announcement in MathSciNet. I am not and never was a co-author of this article.
 1.        In fact S. Ding submitted his purported joint paper in April 2005 to his colleague R. Agarwal (Associate Editor of CMA) who accepted it instantly without refereeing. E. Rodin approved Agarval’s acceptance form.
2.        On July 8, 2005, Ding usurped the role of a corresponding co-author and signed the Consent to Publish and Copyright Agreement on my behalf. Later, in spite of my repeated requests Elsevier refused to inquire into this illicit act.
3.        I informed Rodin that the paper contained a fatal flow. The Editor-in-Chief must and should have known that the article (published without refereeing) could be a fraud. He was not honest enough to notify the readers of the flow. Such behavior should be exposed to the mathematical community.
 4.        The Editor-in-Chief, a person we are supposed to trust, rather than offering up an honest resolution, jointed Ding’s invented story. Sadly, Rodin had the nerve to insinuate my involvement in this publication, something completely false, further jeopardizing my reputation in the Dean’s Office of Syracuse University.
 5.        It is hard to explain my strong feeling of disappointment when I was insulted and threatened by the following statement in Rodin’s letter: “However, seeing the steps that Dr. Iwaniec is taking, I am inclined to publish details of the entire controversy in the greater mathematical community. As of now, however, I shall refrain doing so, because, I do not want to completely ruin Dr. Iwaniec’s reputation” In addition, Christee Zimmermann (Assistant Manager for CMA) forwarded to me her advice to Rodin on how to treat my indignation against his statement: “This seems to be one very confused person”
6.        It was a difficult task for me to fight against Ding’s dishonest lawyers (B. Esler and S. Pack) and powerful Elsevier’s attorneys for Rodin; both had a compelling interest of self preservation. Finally (in August 2008), after stressful and financially costly conciliation (it cost me ~$ 12.000 for legal assistance), Elsevier’s attorney Mark Seeley, S. Ding and E. Rodin admitted that: “ Dr. T. Iwaniec was not a co-author of this article”, what a courtesy?
 7.        Do not let CMA get away with its harmful malpractice. This type of behavior must stop and Rodin has to accept the codes and ethical guidelines for editors. If not, Elsevier will easily become a rich publishing company, full of dishonest and indifferent editors, and we the mathematicians will be losers. What appears to be happening is that some publishers are receiving revenues along with their fees from the libraries of Mathematics Departments that are not aware of the low quality of some journals. In the near future these publishers will also increase their profits by implementing the author-pay model of publication, heedless of the damage to mathematical sciences. Honest researchers will risk paying thousands of dollars in legal costs to retract their names from fraudulent publications or to defend themselves from powerful companies such as Elsevier. I am motivated to fight against dishonest interests of Elsevier but I cannot fight without your help as some mediocre Elsevier journals operate unethically