Coercive Citation Letters.
There’s a major, China-based scholarly society journal that has hidden author fees, but the fees will be refunded if authors cite their papers six times within the two years after they’re published, according to emails from the publisher. This is an example of coercive citation.
The journal is Chinese Chemical Letters, the official organ of the Chinese Chemical Society. Here’s the story:
I got an email from two researchers in Iran. They successfully submitted a paper to the journal, but upon accepting the paper, the journal informed them they would have to pay an author fee of $500.
The authors were surprised because the journal’s website makes no mention of any author fee. It’s not an open-access journal — it’s a subscription journal.
Lacking funds to pay the fee, the Iranian authors emailed the Chinese Chemical Letters editorial office and asked to withdraw the submission. Then they received a surprise.
The editorial office responded with this message:
From: 中国化学快报 <cclbj@imm.ac.cn>;
To: Zahra Azizi <ZahraAzizi@yahoo.com>;
Subject: 答复: Author query CCLET CCLET-D-15-00032
Sent: Mon, Mar 23, 2015 12:49:52 AM
Dear Zahra Azizi,If the manuscript has been cited more than six times (including six times) within two years after publication, this fee will be waived upon a request from the principal author (providing the cited information in detail.
So please make your article be cited more times, we can waive the fee.
Editorial office of CCL
[The email seems to mix up the terms waived and refunded.]
So, this evidence shows the journal is providing a monetary incentive to authors to subsequently cite their articles published in Chinese Chemical Letters, citations that would likely help boost the journal’s impact factor.
This is an example of coercive citation. I think it is unethical because it perverts the scholarly practice of citing earlier research.
To confirm the policy, I sent an email to the journal asking how much it costs to publish there. I received a reply the next day that matches the message the Iranian scholars received.
The journal’s current impact factor is 1.587, but I call this metric into question. It may have been artificially elevated by the journal’s practice of coercive citation.
The Chinese Chemical Society should apologize to scholars for this unethical practice and terminate it immediately. If the journal charges an author fee, the fee should be prominently stated on its website.
