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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SCIgen | 2/2 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCIgen | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:31:03.709962+00:00 | kb-cron |
==== In journals ==== Students at Iran's Sharif University of Technology published a paper in Elsevier's Journal of Applied Mathematics and Computation. The students wrote under the surname "MosallahNejad", which translates literally from Persian language (in spite of not being a traditional Persian name) as "from an Armed Breed". The paper was subsequently removed when the publishers were informed that it was a joke paper. Mikhail Gelfand published a translation of the "Rooter" article in the Russian-language Journal of Scientific Publications of Aspirants and Doctorants in August 2008. Gelfand was protesting against the journal, which was apparently not peer-reviewed and was being used by Russian PhD candidates to publish in an "accredited" scientific journal, charging them 4,000 Rubles to do so. The accreditation was revoked two weeks later. (See Dissernet for related information.) Springer Science+Business Media and IEEE were also the subject of similar pranks.
=== Spoofing Google Scholar and h-index calculators === Refereeing performed on behalf of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers has also been subject to criticism after fake papers were discovered in conference publications, most notably by Labbé and a researcher using the pseudonym of Schlangemann. Cyril Labbé from Grenoble University demonstrated the vulnerability of h-index calculations based on Google Scholar output by feeding it a large set of SCIgen-generated documents that were citing each other, effectively an academic link farm, in a 2010 paper. Using this method the author managed to rank "Ike Antkare" ahead of Albert Einstein for instance.
=== 2013 retractions === In 2013, over 122 published conference papers created by SCIgen were retracted by Springer and the IEEE. Unlike previous submissions that were intended to be pranks, this submission were largely made by Chinese academics, who were using SCIgen papers to boost their publication record.
=== SciDetect === In 2015, SciDetect was released by Springer. This software, developed by Cyril Labbé, is designed to automatically detect papers generated by SCIgen.
=== 2021 report === In 2021, a study was published on 243 SCIgen papers that had been published in the academic literature. They found that SCIgen papers made up 75 per million papers (< 0.01%) in information science, and that only a small fraction of the detected papers had been dealt with.
== See also ==
== References ==
== Further reading == Ball, Philip (2005). "Computer conference welcomes gobbledegook paper". Nature. 434 (7036): 946. Bibcode:2005Natur.434..946B. doi:10.1038/nature03653. PMID 15846311. kdawson (24 December 2008). "Software-Generated Paper Accepted At IEEE Conference". Slashdot. VA Linux Systems Japan. Retrieved 5 May 2009. Peter-Michael Ziegler (26 December 2008). "Dr. Herbert Schlangemann - oder die Geschichte eines pseudowissenschaftlichen Nonsens-Papiers (in German)". Heise Online. Heise Zeitschriften Verlag. Retrieved 5 May 2009.
== External links == Copy of the fake paper: Towards the Simulation of E-Commerce by Herbert Schlangemann SCIgen - An Automatic CS Paper Generator SCIgen detection website