A new phenomenon in medical publishing: the autonomous citation

It is common today for medical (and other) researchers to deposit electronic records and copies of their publications on internet databases such as ResearchGate (www.researchgate.net) and Google Scholar (scholar.google.co.nz). These sources serve to make scientific articles widely available and alert depositors when new citations of their published work appear in other articles. Over the last year one of us (GKC) has become aware that not all such citations are what they seem. These have been discovered during a routine check of new citations appearing on a personal ResearchGate webpage.
Source: Journal of Clinical Epidemiology - Category: Epidemiology Authors: Tags: Letter to the editor Source Type: research