Features and signals in precocious citation impact: A meta-research study.
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| Názov: | Features and signals in precocious citation impact: A meta-research study. |
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| Autori: | Ioannidis JPA; Departments of Medicine and of Epidemiology and Population Health, Stanford University School of Medicine; and Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford (METRICS), Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States of America. |
| Zdroj: | PloS one [PLoS One] 2025 Aug 06; Vol. 20 (8), pp. e0328531. Date of Electronic Publication: 2025 Aug 06 (Print Publication: 2025). |
| Spôsob vydávania: | Journal Article |
| Jazyk: | English |
| Informácie o časopise: | Publisher: Public Library of Science Country of Publication: United States NLM ID: 101285081 Publication Model: eCollection Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1932-6203 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 19326203 NLM ISO Abbreviation: PLoS One Subsets: MEDLINE |
| Imprint Name(s): | Original Publication: San Francisco, CA : Public Library of Science |
| Výrazy zo slovníka MeSH: | Bibliometrics* , Publishing*/statistics & numerical data , Journal Impact Factor*, Humans |
| Abstrakt: | Competing Interests: METRICS has been funded by grants from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation (Arnold Ventures). This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials. The current analysis aimed to evaluate the profiles of scientists who reach top citation impact in a very short time once they start publishing. Precocious citation impact was defined as rising to become a top-cited scientist within t ≤ 8 years after the first publication year. Ultra-precocious citation impact was defined similarly for t ≤ 5 years. Top-cited authors included those in the top-2% of a previously validated composite citation indicator across 174 subfields of science or in the top-100,000 authors of that composite citation indicator across all science based on Scopus. Annual data between 2017 and 2023 show a strong increase over time, with 469 precocious and 66 ultra-precocious citation impact author profiles in 2023. In-depth assessment of validated ultra-precocious scientists in 2023, showed significantly higher frequency of less developed country affiliation; clustering in 4 high-risk subfields; high self-citations for their field; being top-cited only when self-citations were included; high citations to citing papers ratio for their field; extreme publishing behavior; extreme citation orchestration metric c/h2; and high percentage of citations given to first-authored papers compared with all top-cited authors (p < 0.005 for all signals). The 17 ultra-precocious citation impact authors in the 2017-2020 top-cited lists who had retractions showed on average 4.1 of these 8 signal indicators at the time they entered the top-cited list. In conclusion, while some authors with precocious citation impact may be stellar scientists, others probably herald massive manipulative or fraudulent behaviors infiltrating the scientific literature. (Copyright: © 2025 John P. A. Ioannidis. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.) |
| Entry Date(s): | Date Created: 20250806 Date Completed: 20250806 Latest Revision: 20250808 |
| Update Code: | 20250808 |
| PubMed Central ID: | PMC12327621 |
| DOI: | 10.1371/journal.pone.0328531 |
| PMID: | 40768479 |
| Databáza: | MEDLINE |
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Nájsť tento článok vo Web of Science | Abstrakt: | Competing Interests: METRICS has been funded by grants from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation (Arnold Ventures). This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.<br />The current analysis aimed to evaluate the profiles of scientists who reach top citation impact in a very short time once they start publishing. Precocious citation impact was defined as rising to become a top-cited scientist within t ≤ 8 years after the first publication year. Ultra-precocious citation impact was defined similarly for t ≤ 5 years. Top-cited authors included those in the top-2% of a previously validated composite citation indicator across 174 subfields of science or in the top-100,000 authors of that composite citation indicator across all science based on Scopus. Annual data between 2017 and 2023 show a strong increase over time, with 469 precocious and 66 ultra-precocious citation impact author profiles in 2023. In-depth assessment of validated ultra-precocious scientists in 2023, showed significantly higher frequency of less developed country affiliation; clustering in 4 high-risk subfields; high self-citations for their field; being top-cited only when self-citations were included; high citations to citing papers ratio for their field; extreme publishing behavior; extreme citation orchestration metric c/h2; and high percentage of citations given to first-authored papers compared with all top-cited authors (p < 0.005 for all signals). The 17 ultra-precocious citation impact authors in the 2017-2020 top-cited lists who had retractions showed on average 4.1 of these 8 signal indicators at the time they entered the top-cited list. In conclusion, while some authors with precocious citation impact may be stellar scientists, others probably herald massive manipulative or fraudulent behaviors infiltrating the scientific literature.<br /> (Copyright: © 2025 John P. A. Ioannidis. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.) |
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| ISSN: | 1932-6203 |
| DOI: | 10.1371/journal.pone.0328531 |