This is my final presentation of research project on Coercive Citation. While the article focuses on economics, business, sociology and psychology, the problem is likely endemic to all journals. Coercive citation can also be practiced by an individual serving as editor of a journal with the aim to boost one’s own citations. Failure to recognize this trend is likely to cause an underestimation of the breadth of practice in this topic. I recently conducted my study for an individual Professor Nelson Tansu in electrical engineering. My analysis based on tangible data is compelling and appalling

1. M A LI B U ROHWA NI
FI NA L PRESENT A T I ON
Coercive Citation :
Cite my paper or else

2. What is coercive citation
 Coercive citation is a malpractice in academic
publishing wherein an editor of a scientific journal
approached and coerced authors to add unwarranted
citations to articles before the editor will agree to
publish it.

3. Why editors coerce citations?
 Journal editors want to increase the citations of their
journals, because it raises the journal’s impact factor
and ranking, which is a prestige.

4. Some Facts
 A paper in Science in 2012 by Wilhite and Fong
indicated that about 20% of academics working in
economics, sociology, psychology, and multiple
business disciplines have experienced coercive
citation

5. How they do it?
 “you cite This Journal only once in your 40
references. Consequently, we kindly ask you to add
references of articles published in This Journal to
your present article”.

6. My research
 Coercive citation can also be practiced by as an
individual serving as editor or reviewer for a journal
with the aim to boost one’s own citations.
 This type of coercive citation has never been studied
at a micro-level on individual.
 Failure to recognize this trend is likely to cause an
underestimation of the breadth of practice in this
topic.
 Researching an individual does however provide a
good understanding of the overall trend of
publication and citation.

7. Methods
 Subject: an individual who is well known anecdotally
on the World Wide Web in practicing self-citation.
 Nelson Tansu is a Professor of Electrical Engineering
who is well known to have a very high self-citation
(60% according to a study)
 Inclination, publication and citation numbers and
patterns were searched and subsequently recovered
from a research database Scopus.

8. Subject

9. Results
 Improper but Tenacious
 Coercive Citation by N. Tansu is evident and
compelling
 There are a number of factors that can be used in
order to narrow down the potential citation anomaly.

10. (1) As editors of journals
 N. Tansu is assoiate editors for 3 journals,
particularly:
 IEEE OSA JOURNAL OF DISPLAY TECHNOLOGY
 Optical Materials Express
 IEEE Photonics Journal
 The position held as an Associate Editor allows one
to solicit and importune the authors into citing the
editor’s papers. This is evident as most of the
citations of the subject came from the above-
mentioned 3 journals.

11. Evidence from citations
 Premise: If coercive citation is to occur, the citations to the
subject should come mainly from the mentioned-above 3
journals.
 In 2012, Tansu acquired 621 citations, which came from 204
articles, meaning each article are on average gave 3 citations.
However, the top references came from:
 Optical Materials Express (17 references) , IEEE Photonics Journal
(16 references)
 In Jan-May 2013, Tansu obtained 685 citations, which is very high
considering it is only 5 months and more citations than previous
whole year. The citations came from 158 articles, meaning each
article is on average gave 4 citations. However, the top references
came from:
 IEEE OSA Journal of Display Technology (37 references) , Optical
Materials Express (11 references), IEEE Photonics Journal (5
references)

12. Evidence from individual papers
 Premise: If coercive citation is to occur, the citations to the
individual papers of the subject should come mainly from
the mentioned-above 3 journals.
 Zhao H., Liu G., Zhang J., Poplawsky J.D., Dierolf V., Tansu N.
Approaches for high internal quantum efficiency green InGaN light-
emitting diodes with large overlap quantum wells. 2011, Optics
Express, (14)
 This paper has 160 citations. Tansu himself has 17 self-citations, but
the rest of citations come from
 33 citations are from IEEE OSA Journal of Display Technology
 20 citations are from Optical Materials Express
 8 citations are from IEEE Photonics Journal
 The subject gained 61 citations by coercing other authors to cite this
paper.

13. Evidence from individual papers
 Zhao H., Liu G., Arif R.A., Tansu N. Current injection efficiency
induced efficiency-droop in InGaN quantum well light-emitting
diodes. 2010, Solid-State Electronics, (10) 1119-1124
 This paper has 89 citations, Tansu himself has 25 self citations,
 25 citations are from IEEE OSA Journal of Display Technology
 12 citations are from IEEE Photonics Journal
 5 citations are from Optical Materials Express
 The subject profited 42 citations from being editors of the 3
journals.
 All citations came from articles from Asian counties (Taiwan, China,
Korea and Singapore).
 These examples not unexpectedly showed that the subject has
gained moe than 50% of citations from being editors.

14. Evidence through references in journals
 Premise: If coercive citation is manifested, the
number of references to the subject (Tansu) should
be huge compared to other authors. Anomaly in
references should be detected.

15. Citations in IEEE OSA JOURNAL OF DISPLAY
TECHNOLOGY
 In Jan-May 2013, the journal has 115 articles
 Tansu is the top author with 6 papers
 1410 References were cited by the 115 articles.
 Top on the cited list is Nakamura, S. (with 45 citations) an obvious one. (Shuji
Nakamura is the inventor of the blue LED, a major breakthrough in lighting
technology.)
 But second on the list is Tansu with 43 references.

 In 2012, the journal has 123 articles
 As Tansu was not an editor at the time, he didn't publish a single article in the
journal.
 1787 References were cited by the 123 articles.
 But Tansu cannot be found in any of the references.

 This is an anomaly, in 2013 references to Tansu jump from 0 to 43.By becoming an
editor, the subject can benefit and crown the citation list of IEEE OSA JOURNAL
OF DISPLAY TECHNOLOGY.

16. Citations in Optical Materials Express
 In Jan-May 2013, the journal has published 54 articles.
 Tansu didn't publish any paper.
 1534 References were cited by the 54 articles.
 Number one on the list is Tansu, with 25 references.
 In 2012, the journal has 202 articles
 Tansu didn't publish any paper.
 In the 5094 References that were cited by the 202 articles, Tansu shared 25
references.
 In 2011, the journal has 170 articles.
 Tansu didn't publish any paper.
 In the 4294 References that were cited by the 202 articles, Tansu shared 12
references.
 Every year the number of citations to Tansu increases showing the anomaly,
especially in 2013, Tansu is the top cited references.

17. Citations in IEEE Photonics Journal
 In Jan-May 2013, the journal has 93 articles
 Tansu published 6 papers
 In the 2261 References that were cited by the 93 articles,
 Tansu is on the top list with 23 references

 In 2012, the journal has 264 articles
 Tansu has 2 papers
 In the 5459 References that were cited by the 264 articles,
 Tansu shared 37 references.

 In 2011, the journal has 170 articles
 Tansu didn't publish any paper
 In the 2634 References that were cited by the 114 selected articles,
 Tansu shared 13 references.
 This trend is not observed in other journals in the same field: IEEE Photonics
Technology Letters, Applied Physics Letters, Optics Express, Applied Optics. In
other words the subject cannot be found

18. (2) A Guest Editor for a Special Issue
 If one is selected as a guest editor for a Special Issue,
one can coerced all papers to cite one’s papers. The
subject was a guest editor for IEEE OSA Journal of
Display Technology in Volume 9, Issue 4 (April
2013).
 The special issue that feature Recent advances in
solid state lighting turns out to be Advancing Tansu
citations

19. A Guest Editor for a Special Issue
 Premise: If coercive citation is manifested, the
number of citations to the subject (Tansu) should
occur on every paper in the special issue and should
be huge compared to other authors. Anomaly in
references should be detected.

20. Examples
 Effects of H2 in GaN barrier spacer layer of InGaN/GaN multiple quantum-well
light-emitting diodes. Lai, W.-C., Yang, Y.-Y. 2013
 10 citations to Tansu
 Investigating the effect of piezoelectric polarization on GaN-based LEDs with
different quantum barrier thickness. Wang, C.K., Chiang, T.H., Chen, K.Y., Chiou,
Y.Z., Lin, T.K., Chang, S.P., Chang, S.J.
 9 citations to Tansu
 Lateral current spreading effect on the efficiency droop in GaN based light-emitting
diodes. Huang, S., Fan, B., Chen, Z., Zheng, Z., Luo, H., Wu, Z., Wang, G., Jiang, H.
 8 citations to Tansu
 Effect of polarization-matched n-type AlGaInN electron-blocking layer on the
optoelectronic properties of blue InGaN light-emitting diodes. Li, Y., Gao, Y., He,
M., Zhou, J., Lei, Y., Zhang, L., Zhu, K., Chen, Y.
 11 citations to Tansu
 Analysis of internal quantum efficiency and current injection efficiency in III-nitride
light-emitting diodes. Zhao, H., Liu, G., Zhang, J., Arif, R.A., Tansu, N.
 16 citations to Tansu

21. A Guest Editor for a Special Issue
 All 18 papers have 6-16 citations to Tansu, and noticed all
papers are from China, Taiwan and Singapore where an
editor can easily coerced the authors.
 The only paper that escaped is by Feezell and Shuji
Nakamura, a well-known authority in InGaN LED.
 This is in accordance with the research by Wilhite and
Fong that many journal editors appear to strategically
target certain authors, such as assistant and associate
professors (from Asian countries), rather than full
professors (Nakamura), relying on the fact that lower
ranking authors may be more willing to add the
unnecessary citations.

22. Evidence
 Citation manipulation is observed. The subject gained
more than 160 citations from a single journal edition,
thanks to IEEE OSA Journal of Display Technology.
 The excessive citations to Tansu in the papers are not
necessary and essentially superfluous.
 Take an example the paper by Zhang et al. On the Effect
of Step-Doped Quantum Barriers in InGaN/GaN Light
Emitting Diodes:
 “For that, staggered InGaN quantum wells have been
proposed and investigated [16]–[20].” “ …, therefore
increasing the radiative recombination rates [23]–[26]”
 References [16] -[20] and [23]–[26] are all papers by
Tansu.

23. Conclusions
 Considering all this valuable information, my study
suggests that citation solicitation and coercion by an
individual (N. Tansu) is a phenomenon, and is a
conundrum.
 This finding is backed up by solid data from citations of
the subject and in journals.
 Coercive citation is primarily targeting vulnerable
younger researchers from Asian countries as publishing
in a journal is a critical consideration for an author.
 This behavior is in order to have the greatest effect on the
citation of an individual that is opportunistic. This case
study showed that an editor gained 160 citations from
just a single special issue in a journal.

24. Recommendation
 If left unimpeded, it could distort our understanding
of scientific quality and research impact and, over
many occasions, disquiet pronouncements about
tenure, promotion, awards and funding.
 We should stop using citation volume, h index,
impact factor and innovate. H index and Impact
factor is like a self-fulfilling prophecy that tends to
transform the academia in a competition game
among scholar and journals.

25. Thank You