Indexed, Ranked, but Not Verified: Why Bibliometric Status Cannot Guarantee Scholarly Integrity in the Age of AI-Hallucinated Citations?

Editorial Letter

Authors

  • Ilham Kurniawan Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Pembangunan Nasional Veteran Jawa Timur, Surabaya, 60294, Indonesia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.33005/jdiversemedres.v3i5.355

Keywords:

Artificial Intelligent, Hallucination, Illusion of Bibliometric Status, Beyond Hallucinations

Abstract

Preamble

A question that should unsettle every editor, reviewer, and author is this: What happens when fabricated, unverifiable references appear in peer‑reviewed articles published in indexed journals? This is no longer hypothetical. It is a reality that forces us to confront an uncomfortable truth indexation is not innocence, and a Scopus badge is not a certificate of integrity. As Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Medicosphere, I believe this demands urgent attention. The integrity of the scholarly record the foundation of scientific progress is under threat from generative artificial intelligence.

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References

Ansari S. Compound Deception in Elite Peer Review: A Failure Mode Taxonomy of 100 Fabricated Citations at NeurIPS 2025. ArxivOrg [Internet]. 2026 Feb 5; Available from: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.05930

Teixeira da Silva JA. Manuscripts With Fake Chatgpt-Created References: A Case Study. Cent Asian J Med Hypotheses Ethics 2023;4(3):168–171; doi: 10.47316/cajmhe.2023.4.3.05.

Teixeira da Silva JA, Nazarovets S. Assessment of Retracted Papers, and Their Retraction Notices, From a Cancer Journal Associated With “Paper Mills.” J Data Inf Sci 2023;8(2):118–125; doi: 10.2478/jdis-2023-0009.

Nagarkar S. ChatGPT: Impact of an artificial author on bibliometrics. Indian J Med Ethics [Internet]. 2023 Apr 30;8(2):93–4. doi: 10.20529/IJME.2023.029 Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37401180

Pandey M. The crisis of manufactured scholarship: confronting AI-driven “letter-bombing” and profile inflation in medical journals. World J Surg Oncol [Internet]. 2026 Jun 24;24(1):361. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12957-026-04465-6

Bishop D, Abalkina A. Paper mills: a novel form of publishing malpractice affecting psychology. Meta-Psychology. 2023;7. DOI: 10.15626/mp.2022.3422.

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Published

2026-05-29

How to Cite

Kurniawan, I. (2026). Indexed, Ranked, but Not Verified: Why Bibliometric Status Cannot Guarantee Scholarly Integrity in the Age of AI-Hallucinated Citations? Editorial Letter. Journal of Diverse Medical Research : Medicosphere, 3(5), 216–218. https://doi.org/10.33005/jdiversemedres.v3i5.355

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