Pad or Publish-But-Perish

Richard Van Noorden writes, in Nature, about a study published in Science:

Researchers feel pressure to cite superfluous papers

One in five academics in a variety of social science and business fields say they have been asked to pad their papers with superfluous references in order to get published.

The figures, from a survey published today in Science [Wilhite, A. W. & Fong, E. A. Science 335, 542–543 (2012)], also suggest that journal editors strategically target junior faculty, who in turn were more willing to acquiesce.

The controversial practice is not new…

(Thanks to investigator Marilyn Keele for bringing this to our attention.)