Topical Collection at a MDPI Title Contains Massive Citations to the Guest Editor
The topical collection "Critical Metals and Minerals in Coal and Coal Combustion Products" at the MDPI title "Minerals" is found to contain an excessive number of citations to the guest editor, DAI Shifeng (代世峰) from the China University of Mining and Technology (Beijing).
A total of 26 articles were published in this topical collection, among which 508 references were co-authored by Dai. Notably, 10 out of these 26 articles (approximately 38%) include at least 30% of references co-authored by him. The proportion even reaches to 51% in the article [1].
These patterns raise concerns about the necessity of these citations and whether such citation patterns were manipulated.
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