A “Trojan horse” in the reference lists: Citations to a hijacked journal in SSCI-indexed marketing journals

Abstract

Hijacked journals are publication outlets that are created by fraudulent entities for financial gain. They deceitfully use the names of genuine journals to dupe researchers. A hijacked journal publishes papers in return for article publication charges similar to those of gold open access journals, but they are not authentic. By using the same title of a genuine journal, a hijacked journal may confuse authors who send their manuscripts to it. A hijacked journal may also confuse authors that cite articles published in it, wrongly assuming that they appeared in an authentic journal (a phenomenon herein called citation infiltration). Adopting a case study methodology, the main aim of this paper is to investigate the extent of citations received by a hijacked marketing journal from marketing journals indexed in Clarivate Analytics' Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI). Results indicate that the hijacked journal received 25 citations from 13 SSCI-indexed marketing journals. The list of the infiltrated journals includes some of marketing's most “prestigious” journals. Ironically, the SSCI-indexed marketing journal that cited the hijacked journal the most (with nine citations) is none other than the genuine journal whose identity has been theft.