u/IMPSTR-syndrome

Hello everyone, new member here,

I'd like to discuss something that has been bugging me for about a year now: Academic metrics inflation and specifically, the inflation of citations.

It's always been a simple rule of thumb that an article, author or even journal with a ton of citations, is more reliable than others. Therefore, citation count matters a lot in academic institutions and research grants.

Journals care about their IF, some journals (top tier of Q1), have no issue with that since it's naturally very high, others however (talking about some Q2 and especially Q3), artificially boost theirs by encouraging submissions to cite their own articles, hence artificially inflating or keeping their IF. I've been asked to cite specific articles from a Q2 journal.

I've also seen very well-respected authors in my department utilizing arXiv to self-cite without any check to inflate their stats on google scholar. When I confronted one they said "Sadly, this is the game now, everyone does it and the honest ones mostly get left behind". I believe that some self-citing is okay, especially when building on published ideas but I've seen authors retroactively add citations on arXiv (e.g. for a 2025 pre-print, they add a 2026 article in the reviewed v2 while not sufficiently improving the article)

I've seen that arXiv is now trying to push back on some of the AI slop plaguing it, could something be done about citation inflation? I am still new in academia, just starting my PhD, I don't want to play this game.

Hello everyone,

I'm a novice to intermediate player (1500-1600) and I'd like to start playing OTB at some point. I would first like to improve the quality of my play though at longer time controls. The rapid tournaments around my area are mostly at 15+10 and the blitz are at 5+5 or 5+2. I am used to playing bullet (2+1) and 5+0 blitz. When I play a rapid game I tend to get a dominant position and suddenly lose focus and blunder a piece or a rudimentary tactic.

This is by all means a skill issue, specifically a focus issue. I am guessing that others here have experienced this or are actively experiencing it. Any advice? I've heard meditation helps. I also have mild autism but I don't want that to limit me in any way, all advice is welcome.

Today I came across some very exciting news. Apparently arXiv is going to issue a one-year-ban on all papers containing obvious AI hallucinations including but not limited to:
- obvious AI text (e.g. “Here’s an intro for your paper . . ."
- Fake citations
- Placeholder text

I am obviously all for that! I still remember the time when arXiv was at least somewhat reliable. I am however not sure how this will go in terms of implementation.

An admin mentioned the use of standard AI detection algorithms, I am firmly against that since they falsely flag good text as AI all the time. I’m not sure if there’s a definitive way to search for AI use in a database of 2.5 million papers and be in good faith.

Here are some implementation questions I personally have:
- How do we distinguish between a hallucination and an error in a citation (say instead of Anna Sampera, one puts Arthur Sampera. Is that AI or human sloppiness?)
- What if they caught their mistake and amended it in a next version (this one I think they should be pardoned)
- What if there are clear signs of AI use but left in LaTeX comments?
- What if someone was unknowingly added as a co-author to a paper that gets banned
- Should cases be classified by severity so that the lesser offenders just have the opportunity to amend their mistakes and get a strike?

All the above said I’m cautiously optimistic.

Hello everyone, I'm writing a paper for a conference and I'd like to use a figure from a review paper I'm basing my idea on. Specifically, fig 3. from this one: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2112.08863

I'm of course going to cite it as [1] and reference their findings multiple times. Since my study is on the 6 devices shown in the figure, I'd like to add it as a visual aid for the reader. If I do so, I'm of course planning to give full credit in the caption in a direct manner. I am not sure however if I'm allowed to even do that since this paper (in another form) is published in another journal.

If I'm not allowed to take the figure as is, I'll just recreate the devices using a mix of blender and some CAD software and maybe I'll add that it's inspired by [1].

I genuinely need your opinions on this, the journal paper is not open access and it's published by APS https://journals.aps.org/rmp/abstract/10.1103/RevModPhys.95.025003

Thanks in advance.

Dear fellow academics, I understand the need to promote our work, it’s essential for a multitude of reasons.
Dear fellow engineers, I understand the importance of highlighting specific papers that might impact the industry.
LinkedIn definitely has some users that might be interested in implementing our research or collaborating on industry solutions.

That said, I violently despise those corporate, plastic, clearly AI-generated useless shitposts on LinkedIn about profound scientific breakthroughs that people supposedly have. Those are rarely however in preprints and never in actual journals or conferences that withstand the scrutiny of peer review.

I’ve been advised that commenting anything negative on LinkedIn might severely hurt my image and lower my future chances of employment via the platform but I cannot take it anymore. These posts incite a visceral reaction to me.

For context my field is Quantum Computing but I do not believe this phenomenon is field specific.

That’s all, just wanted to rant somewhere, thanks for your understanding.