The cat that fooled Google Scholar, the newest hoax in my collection

I finally got a chance to update my collection of academic hoaxes!

I am now up to 42 academic hoaxes, which is triple the number that I started with in version 1.0 in 2017.

The latest hoax targets not a predatory journal, but an academic search engine. While this is unusual, it is not the first hoax that was pulled to show how easy it is to manipulate Google Scholar. (One of the things that has been interesting to me as this project has continued is that many hoaxers feel compelled to make the same point again.)

And one other things that has been rewarding is that this collection, which I’ve only ever had on Figshare and promoted on my socials and personal websites, has been viewed tens of thousands of times and has been cited by scholars writing in proper journals a few time.

External links

Faulkes Z. 2024. Stinging the Predators: A Collection of Papers That Should Never Have Been Published (version 23). Figshare. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.5248264