With the use of metrics of all kinds on the rise - in applications for grants, promotion, and tenure - the notion that impact factors can be gamed is worrying, if hardly surprising.

A new article in Science, Coercive Citation in Academic Publishing, looks at how the manipulation works and how widespread it might be.

The authors state:

"One side effect of impact factors is the incentive they create for editors to coerce authors to add citations to their journal. Coercive self-citation does not refer to the normal citation directions, given during a peer-review process, meant to improve a paper. Coercive self-citation refers to requests that (i) give no indication that the manuscript was lacking in attribution; (ii) make no suggestion as to specific articles, authors, or a body of work requiring review; and (iii) only guide authors to add citations from the editor's journal."

They go on to say:

"We find that coercion is uncomfortably common and appears to be practiced opportunistically. As editors game the system and authors acquiesce, the integrity of academic publications suffers. We conclude by recommending some steps that can be taken to reduce or eliminate the incentive to engage in coercive self-citation."

Citation: Allen W. Wilhite and Eric A. Fong, Coercive Citation in Academic Publishing, Science 3 February 2012: Vol. 335 no. 6068 pp. 542-543 DOI: 10.1126/science.1212540.