Worried about scarce research funding? Does the prospect of paying rent on that meager post-doc salary keep you up at night? Fear no more!
Innoscience Research in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to the rescue.
The company has launched an innovative (read: shady) scheme to pay researchers to cite studies from several journals it controls. How much can you earn? That depends. The payout is structured this way: $6 a citation and up to five cites, or $30, per paper, or $150 in total across all five journals.
At that rate a scientist who publishes six articles annually and refers to all five journals five times each might bring in as much as $900 a year, while hyperprolific authors like the ones John Ioannidis and colleagues identified could expect to rake in as much, much more. (Ioannidis himself is of course quite prolific, so he could make a pretty penny were he so inclined.) Here’s a thought exercise: If Akihisa Inoue, a materials scientist and a former president of Tohoku University in Japan had been able to cash out in each of the roughly 2,500 articles he published between 1976 and 2018, he could have pulled in about $385,000. That’s bank!)
Here’s the pitch, which was received by someone who forwarded it to us by email:
Who doesn’t like extra rewards? Now you can get more rewards $$ from us
by doing this:
Cite any article from journals below:
1) International Journal of Bioprinting (IJB): https://lnkd.in/f8GjJ5K
2) Journal of Clinical and Translational Research (JCTR):
3) Journal of Clinical and Nursing Research: https://lnkd.in/euN-KGV
4) Cancer Plus: https://lnkd.in/ei5gURV
5) Proceedings of Anticancer Research: https://lnkd.in/egSaadD
When the article gets accepted in any SCI/SCIE journals, you can claim the rewards from us. The manuscript could be your own manuscript, your students’ manuscript and even our collaborative project. How much can you claim?
– 6 USD per citation, max 5 citation per journal!
Example:
In one manuscript of yours:
– IJB- Cited 3 articles: 3 x 6 USD = 18 USD
– JCTR- Cited 5 articles: 5 x 6 USD = 30 USD
– Cancer plus: Cited 2 articles: 2 x 6 USD = 12 USD
Total rewards for that article: 60 USD
Let’s work for it and check out all the journals!
How about let’s not.
The company did not respond to requests for comment.
We note that this is not the first time we have seen journals specifically request citations to what they publish, although those generally don’t involve cash. The schemes are, of course, just another way to game the metrics that play such a large role in academia.
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Maybe some COVID denialist crank journals will start paying Ioannides?
Step 1: Find pay-to-publish predatory journal that doesn’t actually review publications, wherein the publication fee is less than the citation bounty.
Step 2: Use random paper generator to generate garbage paper. (Remember the peer review is fake, so it doesn’t matter).
Step 3: Add bounty citations to journal article.
Step 4: Profit.