The ultimate number game

Professor Tan Sri Dato' Dzulkifli Abd Razak
Comment
New Sunday Times - 10-04-2011

AS the notion of being "ranking crazy" is about to be debated in Malaysia, it is perhaps noteworthy to learn from the experiences of others. A more recent case is from Germany where the Federal Intelligence Service (FIS) reportedly got involved upon the discovery of a Ponzi-like scheme of academic citations. Ranking exercises have always been keenly driven by citations as Key Performance Indexes in so-called reputable high impact journals.

Last week, I was alerted to a blog backreaction.blogspot.com, which describes how the residence of a former academic in Berlin, was searched for material of a purported plan to trade citations as part of a lucrative business deal. Later, the FIS claimed to have uncovered such documentation. Seemingly, it all started with a clue from Michigan University at Ann Arbor in the United States where researchers doing work on citation networks found something amiss. Late last year, their analysis was said to point towards "an exponentially growing cluster originating from a previously unconnected researcher". It led to a base in the German capital, and one Al Bert who is involved in "an unusual number of seminars in locations all over the world, sometimes more than four per week". He uses an email address from the university he graduated from in 2006 and worked at until 2008.

According to the FIS, he is associated with "an agency called 'High Impact' (the website allegedly has since been taken down) that offered to boost a paper's citation count".

Interested? This is how it works: a user, who registers with an almost finished but not yet published manuscript, must agree to be charged 10 euros by the agency for each citation his paper receives above his average citation count at the time of registration. As a bonus, the user also must cite five papers that the agency names, and in turn earn 10 euros for each new paper cited, including his own.

It is hardly surprising then that the scheme greatly induces more researchers to cite each other's papers, forming a network for mutual benefit.

And within a short period, similar networks widened to include even more researchers from diverse fields -- a sure income booster for Bert's operation.

Suddenly there was an influx of researchers having papers with several hundred "bogus" citations above their previously average citation count. The fees collected rose in tandem.

It was also noted that the algorithm to assign citations ensures that Bert's works became top cites. On several instances, he even received invitations to seminars at institutions to be delivered in allegedly "non-existent rooms". For this, he received further sources of income as reimbursement. Everyone in the scheme stands to gain as well but in varying ways.

While the idea is disgusting to start with, it unfortunately -- given the commercial interest -- underscores today's research motives. Overall, it distorts research like never before making it less of a genuine inquiry and more of serving vested interest.

As one commentator, blogger Zephir, rightly pointed out: "citation, and by extension, ranking craziness will result in researchers' preoccupation with publishing only positive, rather than negative articles, where it is easier to write and to cite better references." As a consequence, more "unoriginal research" is preferred since it can make use of several reference citations to work conducted earlier. This is in contrast to an "original" and potentially controversial research that is almost not referenced to earlier work. Also it is more difficult to get published, let alone recognised, when norms and status quo are being challenged!

On top of this, research grants for potentially controversial research, which is out of the mainstream, are less assured. To be sure, many journals are known to safeguard their interest -- knowledge-wise and commercially. People like Bert knows exactly how to exploit it to his advantage!

Upon getting to know about the said blog, I thought it was a good April Fool's joke but then realised even if it is one, it is only a matter of time before someone, somewhere will institute the scheme if citation and ranking madness get the better of us. In the end, society will be short-changed as it is no longer the ultimate beneficiary (if not as tax payers) of new knowledge. Instead, knowledge is more for some number games!

It would be a sad day when academics, who are supposedly the custodians of knowledge and vanguards of societal interest, allow themselves to betray these sacred commitments for a mere number game!

* The writer is the Vice-Chancellor of Universiti Sains Malaysia. He can be contacted at vc@usm.my