I had the experience of being cited in a publication, and the paper credited to me was a hallucination. I told the author, they blamed their co-author and then ghosted me, and no response at all from the journal. Some people don't care as long as they get published...

April 10, 2026 - 07:00 UTC

20
11
464
I had a similar thing and I told the editor and they didn’t care
1
0
4
0
0
3
It kind of proves journals are slacking with the review process.
0
0
2
Yeah, love to see how everything we care for gets so easily destroyed. So many people, unfortunately, have no shame in Academia.
0
0
3
Why not name and shame?
1
0
5
Good question. I've been reticent to do so so far, but I don't know why really... It's this paper, which is still up even though I was told it was going to be retracted by the author, before he ghosted me. And here's the hallucinated citation:
1
2
21
That is a form of plagiarism
1
0
7
OMG definitely! Because the citation was attached to some of my actual work in the body of the text, so there is no genuine citation of my material :(
0
0
13
But if you get cited for writing a paper that doesn't exist, does your cite count still go up?
1
0
3
Good question - I will double check Google Scholar, but I don't think its there.
0
0
4
This is awful to read, I wish you all the luck with it (in fact, I wish you triumph and victory)!
0
0
2
Has AI done anything good yet?
0
0
2
I contacted a journal when a similar thing happened to me - noting they adhere to COPE & the journal’s ethics statement. They immediately blurred the article out (it had a doi) and eventually put a retraction notice up. So it can work!
0
0
2
I wonder what Scopus does with that, nothing I should hope.
1
0
0
It doesn't turn up on Scopus, mostly because its fictional :)
1
0
1
kill all ai now
0
0
0
Will leave this here: "AI is the asbestos we are shoveling into the walls of our society and our descendants will be digging it out for generations " - Cory Doctorow
0
0
1
That's terrible, but I think I might be able to top that. I recently received a paper submitted to a journal I edit, with a hallucinated citation claimed to be written by ... me.

As if I wouldn't notice.
0
0
4
This happened to me too. Thankfully the journal handled it better and the paper was retracted.
0
0
1
An AI tool told me about a perfect source for a course I was building. I had published it with my dean, but it was credited to Norman Conaway (who?)
0
0
2
I see you, Mara Chatbot!
0
0
2
This is a big problem for reference librarians, who are constantly being asked to find these nonexistent papers and wasting their time.
0
0
16
That's awful. We put so much into journal articles and then they're treated like nothing!
0
0
3
Does the author acknowledge gov't funding, and can you look up the funding source and program officer (e.g. in NIH RePORTer? This is definitely a breach of scientific integrity and if taxpayer $$ were used, the PO should know.
1
0
5
They're not US based. I could look into it though...
1
0
3
I bet in a few years you're gonna get a confused email from someone trying to get a copy of your non-existent paper cause they just can't seem to find it anywhere for the life of them.
1
0
13
I've already gotten that email. Luckily it was from a kid in 10th grade who was embarrassed when I pointed it out and promised to be more careful in the future. The paper also existed, but I wasn't an author... Which was good because it was on sports ball and that is not my thing.
0
0
8