The Journal of Innovation Management (JIM) is guided by COPE's 'Citation manipulation' discussion document which defines the key issues and existing solutions around unethical citation practices.

 

According to COPE, 'Manipulative citation is characterised by behaviours intended to inflate citation counts for personal gain, such as: excessive self-citation of an authors’ own work, excessive citation to the journal publishing the citing article, and excessive citation between journals in a coordinated manner.' 

 

Key Points of the discussion document, as defined by COPE: 

• Citation manipulation is a problem when references do not contribute to the scholarly content of the article, and are included solely to increase citations.

• Any party which includes or requests to add citations where the motivations are merely self-promotional violates publication ethics.

• Penalties for citation manipulation may include removal of editors from editorial roles, or removal or rejection of journals from citation indexes.

• There may be instances where self-citation and requests for citations are legitimate.

 

Coercive citation manipulation can come from reviewers who recommend the requirement that their articles be cited and where the editor accepts the recommendation as a requirement; where editors or editorial board members require citation of their published research or published research from the journal; or, where a journal requires citations to articles within that journal as a condition of publication, independent of their relevance to the subject at hand.