A report prepared at the request of the Spanish Committee on Research Ethics certifies the “deliberate” and “systematic” manipulation of the curriculum of the rector of the University of Salamanca, Juan Manuel Corchado. The document, of 131 pagesis signed by Emilio Delgado and Alberto Martintwo of Spain’s leading experts in bibliometrics, the analysis of a person’s scientific activity. Their conclusions are compelling: Corchado and his closest collaborators organized “a factory of publications and citations” with “strategies based on questionable publishing conduct and bad editorial practices, if not openly fraudulent practices.”
The impact of a scientist is measured by the number of mentions or citations he or she receives in the studies of other researchers. This impact is transformed into reputation, promotions and funding. The report by Delgado and Martín notes that Corchado’s CV was “artificially” transformed starting in 2017, just when lost the elections to rector on his first attempt. That year, the already veteran professor of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence had just 4,750 citations, which suddenly rose to 15,000 in 2018, to almost 31,000 in 2020 and to 44,000 in March 2024, according to his profile on Google Scholar, deactivated by Corchado when EL PAÍS began to publish information about his internships.
Delgado and Martín, professor and lecturer at the University of Granada respectively, denounce the creation of “an editorial framework aimed at producing publications and citations in order to […] shine in the rankings of researchers.” The authors of the report point directly to the “mega-conference” on computing organized each year by Corchado’s group, with a price of up to 585 euros per attendee. The conferences presented, later published in proceedings of the Springer Nature publishing house, were used to add a “pre-cooked list” of up to fifty citations to Corchado or to the journal that he himself edits: Advances in Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence Journal (ADCAIJ). The publisher Springer Nature has announced the mass retraction of these works, without yet specifying a figure.
On May 30, this newspaper published internal messages showing that the professor from Salamanca gave instructions for years to his workers to add dozens of citations to himself in their studies. The results of Delgado and Martín “confirm that there is a significant and systematic manipulation of the reference lists in some of the documents analyzed, especially in those presented at conferences organized by the BISITE group”, led by Corchado at the University of Salamanca. “This finding raises serious concerns about academic ethics within the BISITE group,” the report warns. This Salamanca team boasts of participating in multi-million dollar projects, such as the European Network of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence dAIEDGEwith 14.4 million euros of budget.
The new analysis identifies four platforms on which the strategy of citing the work of Corchado and his colleagues “massively and irregularly” was carried out. In addition to conference proceedings, this trick was repeated in publications edited by Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca and in documents uploaded to the academic repository of the Salamanca institution (GREDOS) or to the social network ResearchGate. “The existence of several patterns of bad practices that result in the manipulation of the academic record is confirmed,” warn the experts from the University of Granada.
Emilio Delgado and Alberto Martín examine the case of six volumes on mobile applications and artificial intelligence published by Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca in 2019 and 2020. 79% of the more than 3,100 references in these publications are to works by Corchado or his journal ADCAIJ. In one of the volumes, entitled Parallel and Distributed Systemsthe percentage reaches 87%. In Mobile Computing and Applications85%. In The role of artificial intelligence and distributed computing in IOT applications82%. “This citation pattern is extremely anomalous, as well as problematic, since it involves a spurious use of the academic citation mechanism,” criticise the specialists from the University of Granada, who claim that at least one of these volumes has disappeared from the Internet without any explanation from Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca.
“One of the aspects that we consider to be the most serious among those that have taken place during the development of this case is the systematic deletion of documents deposited in the institutional repository of the University of Salamanca, GREDOS,” point out Delgado and Martín. “We consider it extremely anomalous that an institutional repository, and we understand, the university library that manages it, agrees to delete documents from the repository without leaving a trace. It is extremely anomalous because the mission of an institutional academic repository is to preserve the memory of the research activity of its institution,” they add.
The Spanish Committee on Research Ethics, an independent body created by the Government and the autonomous communities, urged the University of Salamanca on June 11 to exercise “its powers of inspection and sanction” in view of “the alleged seriousness” of the practices of its rector. The response of the Salamanca institution was to commission a report from the historian Salvador Rus Rufino, an old acquaintance of Corchado who had even defended the rector in public. Rus Rufino presented a superficial and exculpatory analysis on September 9, which was unanimously rejected by the 11 members of the Spanish Committee on Research Ethics, chaired by the doctor Jordi Camigeneral director of the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park.
The ethics committee requested on September 17 a real investigation about Corchado, but the rector intends to consider the matter closed. “It is a past issue for me,” declared to the local press on Friday. Emilio Delgado and Alberto Martín reveal in their report that they were willing to send their analysis to Rus Rufino. “The reality has been that the Commission of the University of Salamanca has not contacted us,” they explain. Delgado and Martín have decided make their results public this Monday.
The report prepared for the Spanish Committee on Research Ethics leaves the University of Salamanca in a very uncomfortable position, not only having a rector accused of “systematic manipulation” of his CV, but also having bad practices spread to other university bodies, such as Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca and the Library Service, ultimately responsible for the deletion of some 200 documents. The Governing Council of the University of Salamanca, made up of 53 members, approved the exculpatory report of Rus Rufino on September 11 with a very large majority. Only three professors voted against.
Delgado and Martín denounce “the elimination of information related to the case”, especially after March 12, when EL PAÍS contacted Corchado for the first time. “In the case of GREDOS, there is no evidence that these documents ever existed, which implies a manipulation of the academic record by concealment,” warn the authors of the report. The Granada specialists also highlight that Corchado has deleted the texts from his blog in which he boasted of being a the fourth best scientist from Spain and one of the 250 best in the world in the field of computing.
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