Scientific papers are the recordkeepers of progress in research. Each year researchers publish millions of papers in more than 3

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问题     Scientific papers are the recordkeepers of progress in research. Each year researchers publish millions of papers in more than 30,000 journals. The scientific community measures the quality of those papers in a number of ways, including the perceived quality of the journal (as reflected by the title’s impact factor) and the number of citations a specific paper accumulates. The careers of scientists and the reputation of their institutions depend on the number and prestige of the papers they produce, but even more so on the citations attracted by these papers.
    In recent years, there have been several episodes of scientific fraud, including completely made-up data, massaged or doctored figures, multiple publications of the same data, theft of complete articles, plagiarism of text, and self-plagiarism. And some scientists have come up with another way to artificially boost the number of citations to their work.
    Citation cartels, where journals, authors, and institutions conspire to inflate citation numbers, have existed for a long time. In 2016, researchers developed an algorithm to recognize suspicious citation patterns, including groups of authors that disproportionately cite one another and groups of journals that cite each other frequently to increase the impact factors of their publications. Recently, another expression of this predatory behavior has emerged: so-called support service consultancies that provide language and other editorial support to individual authors and to journals that sometimes advise contributors to add a number of citations to their articles and the articles of colleagues. Some of these consultancies are also active in organizing conferences and can advise that citations be added to conference proceedings. In this manner, a single editor can drive hundreds of citations in the direction of his own articles or those of colleagues that may be in his circle.
    The advent of electronic publishing and authors’ need to find outlets for their papers resulted in thousands of new journals. The birth of predatory journals wasn’t far behind. These journals can act as milk cows where every single article in an issue may cite a specific paper or a series of papers. In some instances, there is absolutely no relationship between the content of the article and the citations. The peculiar part is that the journal that the editor is supposedly working for is not profiting at all—it is just providing citations to other journals. Such practices can lead an article to accrue more than 150 citations in the same year that it was published.
    How insidious is this type of citation manipulation? In one example, an individual— acting as author, editor, and consultant—was able to use at least 15 journals as citation providers to articles published by five scientists at three universities. The problem is rampant in Scopus, a citation database, which includes a high number of the new "international" journals. In fact, a listing in Scopus seems to be a criterion to be targeted in this type of citation manipulation.
    Scopus itself has all the data necessary to detect this malpractice. Red flags include a large number of citations to an article within the first year. And for authors who wish to steer clear of citation cartel activities: when an editor, a reviewer, or a support service asks you to add inappropriate references, do not oblige and do report the request to the journal.
What should an author do to deal with citation manipulation?

选项 A、Take legal action.
B、Demand an apology.
C、Seek professional advice.
D、Reveal their misconduct.

答案D

解析 根据题干中的to deal with citation manipulation定位到最后一段,其中提到“当编辑、审稿人或支持服务机构要求您添加不适当的参考文献时,不要答应并要将此类要求报告给期刊”,也就是说要揭露引用操纵这种不当行为,故正确答案为D。A选项中的legal,B选项中的apology以及C选项中的professional advice在文中并未提及,故均排除。
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