Do they practice what they preach? The presence of problematic citations in business ethics research
Abstract
Purpose In scholarly publications, citations play an essential epistemic role in creating and disseminating knowledge. Conversely, the use of problematic citations impedes the growth of knowledge, contaminates the knowledge base and disserves science. This study investigates the presence of problematic citations in the works of business ethics scholars. Design/methodology/approach The authors investigated two types of problematic citations: inaccurate citations and plagiarized citations. For this, 1,200 randomly selected citations from three leading business ethics journals were assessed based on: (1) referenced journal errors, (2) article title errors and (3) author name errors. Other papers that replicated the same title errors were identified. Findings Of the citations in the examined business ethics journals, 21.42% have at least one error. Of particular concern are the citation errors in article titles, where 3.75% of examined citations have minor errors and another 3.75% display major errors – 7.5% in total. Two-thirds of minor and major title errors were repeatedly replicated in previous and ensuing publications, which confirms the presence of citation plagiarism. An average article published in a business ethics journal contains at least three plagiarized citations. Even though business ethics fares well compared to other disciplines, a situation where every fifth citation is problematic is unacceptable. Practical implications Business ethics scholars are not immune t…
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Correct indexing of author information is important for the author's metrics of scholarship such as the h-index.
“Lastly, correct indexing of author information is important for the author's metrics of scholarship such as the h-index (Montenegro et al., 2021;Serenko et al., 2021).”
From Reference accuracy of primary studies published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals: A scoping review (2024) · cites this paper as Serenko et al., 2021
Correct indexing is necessary for documenting the frequency an article is cited, which contributes to a journal's impact factor.
“Correct indexing is necessary for documenting the frequency an article is cited which contributes to a journal's impact factor (Davids et al., 2010;Fenton et al., 2000;Serenko et al., 2021).”
From Reference accuracy of primary studies published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals: A scoping review (2024) · cites this paper as Serenko et al., 2021
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References 98 · Cited by 11
- Authors
- Serenko, A., Dumay, J., Hsiao, P.-C. K., & Choo, C. W.
- Affiliations
- Ontario Tech University (CA)
- Macquarie University (AU)
- University of Waikato (NZ)
- University of Toronto (CA)
- Venue
- Journal of Documentation
- Publisher
- Emerald
- Published
- 2021-06-18
- Volume
- 77
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 1304-1320
- ISSN
- 0022-0418 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3174350654
- Cited by
- 11
- References
- 98
- Citations by year
- 2025: 1 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 1
- FWCI
- 3.13
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Documentation (publishedVersion)
- VBN Forskningsportal (Aalborg Universitet) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Academic integrity and plagiarism
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › scientometrics and bibliometrics research
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Publishing and Scholarly Communication
- Keywords
- citation errors, business ethics research, academic integrity, author name errors, research misconduct, citation practices
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
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