New Delhi, An audit of 2.5 million biomedical research papers has revealed that nearly 3,000 contained fake citations absent in scientific databases.
The papers were published between January 1, 2023, and February 18, 2026, in PubMed Central's Open Access database, managed by the US' National Institutes of Health.
Researchers identified 4,046 fake citations across 2,810 papers, a more than 12-fold growth since 2023, with the sharpest increase beginning mid-2024, coinciding with the rise of AI writing tools.
Lead researcher Maxim Topaz warned that fake citations directly impact patients as medical professionals make treatment decisions based on clinical guidelines.
The authors recommended publishers to verify references with each paper submission and that indexing services add a metadata to records, so that users can assess the accuracy of references.
