In the past, I have criticized the
scientist rankings produced by Research.com because they are based on Google Scholar, which has
well-known limitations. Specifically, these rankings do not satisfy any of the three
fundamental criteria: disambiguation, removal of self-citations, and fractional
counting.
Recently, researchers from New York University identified an additional and highly concerning limitation in Google Scholar's citations. Their study demonstrated that it is possible to create a profile for a fictitious author and upload fabricated articles generated by ChatGPT to ResearchGate. These fake articles can then cite the fictitious author, artificially boosting their citation count on Google Scholar. As noted on page 15 of the study:
"Google Scholar neither
censored the profile, nor reached out for further verification, despite the
numerous red flags: (i) having an affiliation that does not exist; (ii) 100% of their 380
citations are stemming from their own papers; and (iii) all of their papers are
ChatGPT-generated without
any scientific contributions whatsoever" https://arxiv.org/pdf/2402.04607
This demonstrates that Google Scholar citations have limited value and should never be used to rank scientists. Instead, citations from publications indexed in Scopus or Web of Science are more valuable. This assertion is supported by Clarivate Analytics' success in predicting the names of 75 Nobel laureates using a citation-based methodology.
PS - There is only one global ranking of scientists that meets all three fundamental criteria: disambiguation, removal of self-citations, and fractional counting. https://19-pacheco-torgal-19.blogspot.com/2023/10/october-2023-update-of-stanford.html
