17.5% Citations to DAI Shifeng Were from "International Journal of Coal Geology"
Our previous investigations [1, 2] revealed that DAI Shifeng from (代世峰) from the China University of Mining and Technology (Beijing) got a large number of questionable citations through topical collections and special issues in the MDPI title "Minerals". However, our further investigation indicates that the "International Journal of Coal Geology" (IJCG), rather than the MDPI journals, was the main source of citations for DAI.
In 2025, about 125 articles were issued in the IJCG, excluding the editorial articles. The 5GH Team extracted the reference data of those articles from the OpenAlex database. Notable, records for several IJCG articles are missing in the OpenAlex database, as a result, the reference data of only 122 articles was extracted. A total of 9,681 references were identified. Among them, 585 references were coauthored by DAI [3]. According to his Google Scholar profile, DAI received about 3,344 citations in the year of 2025. That indicates that 17.5% citations to DAI in 2025 came from IJCG, the journal he served as the Editor-in-Chief.
The Team also notes that 7 articles (about 5.6% of the total issued articles) each contains over 30 references coauthored by DAI, and 2 articles each even have more than 50 such references.
We used the OpenAlex database rather than original publication sources to examine reference data because it is openly accessible to the general public, enabling anyone to verify our findings. But please note that some reference data are missing in the OpenAlex database, such that, the citations to DAI may be underestimated. On the other hand, Goolge Scholar may overestimate an individual's citation count, resulting underestimated proportion of the citations from the IJCG.
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