Citations to questionable journals threaten research integrity: bibliometrics as a key actor in the detection

Theme 10. Breaches of research integrity: Bibliometrics can play a crucial role in protecting research integrity by identifying questionable publishing practices. Questionable publishers engage in unethical research practices and they are exploiting the academic publishing business model i.e. manipulating research staff and students by soliciting articles (often through spam emails) and usually requesting payment for publishing in advance, lack of peer review, and false claims of databases indexing and impact factors, that can harm the credibility of research. Bibliometrics can help to detect these practices by tracking citations to questionable journals. This paper investigates whether journals that have been removed from the Directory of Open Access Journals because of suspected misconduct are still being cited within journals indexed in the mainstream citation databases. This study aims to highlight the importance of bibliometrics as a method for detecting citation contamination. This study aims to raise awareness of bibliometrics' potential in safeguarding research integrity and promoting ethical publishing practices.