Business Journals Combat Coercive Citation

Abstract

A. W. Wilhite and E. A. Fong (“Coercive citation in academic publishing,” Policy Forum, 3 February, p. [542][1]) perform a valuable service in exposing the practice by some journal editors to increase their journals' impact factors by coercing authors to add frivolous citations to recent works in their journals. Wilhite and Fong point to a handful of business journals as being among the worst offenders. They name names in table S12. As a former head of the Policy Board of the Journal of Consumer Research, I can attest that business journal editors have a strong self-interest in stamping out coercive citation, and they have taken concrete steps to do so over the past 2 years. In August 2010, 15 marketing journal editors met specifically to discuss and root out the practice. On 15 November 2010, 26 editors of some of the most prestigious journals in business wrote a letter to more than 600 business school deans decrying coercive citation ([ 1 ][2]). They argued that journal editors would have little incentive to engage in coercive citation if deans and business school faculties judged articles on their own merits rather than based on impact factors of the journals in which they were published. The 26 editors recommended vigilance in identifying spikes in the ratio of citations coming from their own journals relative to others, which might signal editorial manipulation by a new editorial team. Those efforts have borne fruit; the journals in my own field have taken the pledge. I hope that Wilhite and Fong's Policy Forum will produce a much broader impact across the sciences. 1. [↵][3]1. J. G. Lynch , Frivolous Journal Self-Citation (2010); . [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.1212540 [2]: #ref-1 [3]: #xref-ref-1-1 View reference 1 in text