An article has come to light that has been advert in nearly 400 donnish subject area and scientific newspaper . There ’s just one trouble : it does n’t be .
The “ phantom mention ” was first spotted byPieter Kroonenberg , a Dutch emeritus professor in Statistics , who prompt his friend Professor Anne - Wil Harzing to jab deeper into the mystery .
As she explain ina web log post , he was calculate at the Elsevier daybook author panache guide and found the following reference : “ Van der Geer , J. , Hanraads , J.A.J. , Lupton , R.A. , 2000 . The nontextual matter of writing a scientific clause . Journal of Science Communications 163 ( 2 ) 51 - 59 . ”
The commendation catch Kroonenberg ’s attention because he in reality knew another academic call John van de Geer , the study ’s suppose source . However , he noticed a slightly dissimilar spelling of the name . On closer inspection , he also noticed that the journal was called “ Journal of Science Communications ” rather than its right name “ Journal of Science Communication ” .
Something seemed off . After some detecting around , Harzing find the clause appeared to be whole fictional despite appear in almost 400 discipline . However , as she by and by found out , this was not a matter of put-on or deception with intent . It is actually a bizarrely common misapprehension .
Harzing says that most of the citations of the phantom reference were in “ fairly low - quality conference composition ” , often by researcher who were from countries “ where there is n’t a strong tradition of writing in English . ” It also became apparent that the phantom reference was regularly cited as the first article in the reference list .
It sprain out , the acknowledgment is a made - up example from the scientific discipline publishing house Elsevier to show generator how to name their workplace . The “ phantom reference ” simply ended up in researcher ' lists of citations by researchers mixing up the template with their own references , it seems .
Just 400 out of the 85,000 Procedia conference papers admit the reference , meaning the misapprehension can only be found in 0.5 percent of the total papers , according to Harzing . She says this could think of the error is " unfortunate " yet could be see to be within an " acceptable border of error . "
Nevertheless , it seems that the phantom reference is a symptom of wide problems within academic science publishing , such as low - quality restraint , regardless editing , and – the real bugbear – predatory journal .
“ Just like many other mysteries , our mystery of the phantom reference book at long last had a very simple account : overemotional writing and sloppy quality control , ” Harzing concluded .
[ H / T : Retraction Watch ]
