Manuscripts With Fake Chatgpt-Created References: A Case Study

Abstract

As a continued theme in citation abuses and the need to reform the culture of citation in academic publishing, as well as an extension of the exploration of authors’ rights, this letter highlights a case in which an author’s name was abused in a fabricated citation in a preprints.org preprint that was ultimately retracted. As a punitive measure, the preprints’ authors were blacklisted. The first author then republished (minus the previous co-authors) a modified preprint at another preprint server, Research Square, where it was also retracted for the presence of fictitious citations. In such cases, it is argued that authors whose names are abused in fictitious citations, created by ChatGPT or otherwise, as identified by real authors or the paper’s readers, should have the right to not want to be cited in this manner, because it may carry with it negative reputational consequences. There are also negative reputational consequences for journals which appear in fictional citations.