A new analysis of data on scientists with exceptional early-career success—according to a metric known as citation impact—has identified common characteristics among them, some of which could also be indicators of problematic or fraudulent behaviors. John Ioannidis of Stanford University, U.S., presents these findings in the open-access journal PLOS One on August 6, 2025.
Citation impact reflects a scientist's overall influence in their field, which depends, in part, on the number of times their published research has been cited by other scholarly publications. Some scientists rapidly achieve very high citation impact. This can happen for top scientists whose exceptional talent is quickly recognized. However, others may rapidly reach high citation impact through fraud, such as manipulating data, or through inappropriate efforts to "game" citations, such as repeatedly citing one's own work without justification.
Many cases of inappropriate manipulation of citation impact may go undetected, and a deeper understanding of the situation could be helpful in addressing it. To that end, Ioannidis analyzed information on hundreds of thousands of scientists from citation databases across 174 scientific fields. He categorized those who became top-cited within 8 years of their first publication as having "precocious" citation impact, while "ultra-precocious" citation impact was achieved within 5 years.
He found that, between 2017 and 2023, the number of scientists with precocious and ultra-precocious citation impact increased. A closer look at 59 ultra-precocious scientists uncovered some common characteristics. For instance, they were more likely to be affiliated with institutions in less developed countries and tended to work in one of four fields: Environmental Sciences; Energy; Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing; or Mechanical Engineering and Transports.
Ultra-precocious scientists also had characteristics that can be associated with problematic behaviors. For example, they tended to have high rates of self-citation and were top-cited only if those self-citations were considered. Many also had had papers retracted, but usually long after they had achieved top-cited status.
These findings could inform efforts to identify scientists who may have engaged in problematic behaviors. However, Ioannidis cautions, such efforts must incorporate safeguards against bias or discrimination based solely on geographical origin of the authors, as outstanding talent and research often emerges from less developed countries, and non-white scientists, scientists from non-Western countries and non-native English-speaking scientists face many disadvantages. He also notes rapid development of highly cited emerging fields, increased prevalence of hyper-authorship practices, and large-scale collaborative projects may contribute to the emergence of ultra-precocious citation patterns, so careful scrutiny is required on a case-by-case basis.
The author adds: "Precocious authors seem to be a mixture of some of the very best, outstanding scientists and some of the very worst, manipulative ones. Hopefully, this work will provide impetus to improve our ability to understand how citation gaming processes operate as the scientific literature is burgeoning with massive production of new scientific papers."
In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS One: http://plos.io/459lOju
Citation: Ioannidis JPA (2025) Features and signals in precocious citation impact: A meta-research study. PLoS One 20(8): e0328531. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0328531
Author countries: U.S.
Funding: The work of John Ioannidis is supported by an unrestricted gift from Sue and Bob O'Donnell to Stanford University. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
