2023年考研英语一阅读 Text 4 原文翻译及答案解析

Scientific papers are the recordkeepers of progress in research. Each year researchers publish millions of papers in more than 30, 000 journals. The scientific community measures the quality of those papers in a number of ways, including the perceived quality of the journal ( as reflected by the title's impact factor) and the number of citations a specific paper accumulates. The careers of scientists and the reputation of their institutions depend on the number and prestige of the papers they produce, but even more so on the citations attracted by these papers.

科学论文是研究进展的记录者。每年，研究人员在超过30,000种期刊上发表数百万篇论文。科学界通过多种方式衡量这些论文的质量，包括期刊的感知质量（如影响因子反映的）和特定论文积累的引用次数。科学家的职业生涯和其机构的声誉取决于他们发表论文的数量和声望，但更取决于这些论文吸引的引用次数。

Citation cartels, where journals, authors, and institutions conspire to inflate citation numbers, have existed for a long time. In 2016 , researchers developed an algorithm to recognize suspicious citation patterns, including groups of authors that disproportionately cite one another and groups of journals that cite each other frequently to increase the impact factors of their publications. Recently, another expression of this predatory behavior has emerged: so-called support service consultancies that provide language and other editorial support to individual authors and to journals sometimes advise contributors to add a number of citations to their articles.

引用联盟，即期刊、作者和机构合谋夸大引用数量的行为，早已存在。2016年，研究人员开发了一种算法来识别可疑的引用模式，包括过度相互引用的作者群体和频繁相互引用以提高影响因子的期刊群体。最近，这种掠夺性行为的另一种表现形式出现了：所谓的支持服务咨询机构为个体作者和期刊提供语言及其他编辑支持，有时会建议投稿人在文章中添加一定数量的引用。

The advent of electronic publishing and authors' need to find outlets for their papers resulted in thousands of new journals. The birth of predatory journals wasn't far behind. These journals can act as milk cows where every single article in an issue may cite a specific paper or a series of papers. In some instances, there is absolutely no relationship between the content of the article and the citations. The peculiar part is that the journal that the editor is supposedly working for is not profiting at all-it is just providing citations to other journals. Such practices can lead an article to accrue more than 150 citations in the same year that it was published.

电子出版的出现和作者寻找发表论文的渠道的需求导致了数千种新期刊的诞生。掠夺性期刊的出现也紧随其后。这些期刊可以充当“奶牛”，其中每期的每一篇文章都可能引用某篇特定论文或一系列论文。在某些情况下，文章内容与引用之间完全没有关系。奇特的是，编辑据称工作的期刊根本没有获利——它只是为其他期刊提供引用。这种做法可能导致一篇文章在发表当年就积累超过150次引用。

How insidious is this type of citation manipulation? In one example, an individual-acting as author, editor, and consultant-was able to use at least 15 journals as citation providers to articles published by five scientists at three universities. The problem is rampant in Scopus, a citation database, which includes a high number of the new "international" journals. In fact, a listing in Scopus seems to be a criterion to be targeted in this type of citation manipulation.

这种引用操纵有多隐蔽？在一个例子中，一个同时充当作者、编辑和顾问的个人，能够利用至少15种期刊作为引用提供者，为三所大学的五位科学家发表的文章提供引用。这个问题在Scopus（一个引用数据库）中很普遍，该数据库包含大量新的“国际”期刊。事实上，被列入Scopus似乎是这种引用操纵的一个目标标准。

Scopus itself has all the data necessary to detect this malpractice. Red flags include a large number of citations to an article within the first year. And for authors who wish to steer clear of citation cartel activities: when an editor, a reviewer, or a support service asks you to add inappropriate references, do not oblige and do report the request to the journal.

Scopus本身拥有检测这种不当行为所需的所有数据。危险信号包括文章在发表第一年内获得大量引用。对于希望避开引用联盟活动的作者：当编辑、审稿人或支持服务要求您添加不适当的参考文献时，请不要照做，并向期刊报告该请求。