A report for the Spanish Ethics Committee confirms the “systematic manipulation” of the Salamanca rector’s CV | Science | EUROtoday

A report ready on the request of the Spanish Committee on Research Ethics certifies the “deliberate” and “systematic” manipulation of the curriculum of the rector of the University of Salamanca, Juan Manuel Corchado. The 131-page doc is signed by Emilio Delgado and Alberto Martín, two of Spain’s main specialists in bibliometrics, the evaluation of an individual’s scientific exercise. Its conclusions are conclusive: Corchado and his closest collaborators organized “a factory of publications and citations” with “strategies based on questionable publishing conduct and bad editorial practices, if not on openly fraudulent practices.”

The influence of a scientist is measured by the variety of mentions or citations she or he receives within the research of different researchers. This influence is reworked into repute, promotions and funding. The report by Delgado and Martín notes that Corchado's CV was “artificially” reworked beginning in 2017, simply when he misplaced the election for rector in his first try. That yr, the already veteran professor of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence had simply 4,750 citations, which abruptly rose to fifteen,000 in 2018, to nearly 31,000 in 2020 and to 44,000 in March 2024, based on his profile on Google Scholar, deactivated by Corchado when EL PAÍS started to publish details about his practices.

Delgado and Martín, professor and lecturer on the University of Granada respectively, denounce the creation of “an editorial framework aimed at producing publications and citations in order to […] shine in the rankings of researchers”. The authors of the report point directly to the “mega-conference” on computing organised each year by Corchado’s group, with a price of up to 585 euros per attendee. The conferences presented, later published in proceedings of the Springer Nature publishing house, were used to add a “pre-cooked list” of up to fifty citations to Corchado or to the journal he himself edits: Advances in Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence Journal (ADCAIJ). The publisher Springer Nature has announced the mass retraction of these works, without yet specifying a figure.

On May 30, this newspaper published internal messages that showed that the professor from Salamanca gave instructions for years to his employees to add dozens of citations to himself in their studies. The results of Delgado and Martín “confirm that there is a significant and systematic manipulation of the reference lists in some of the documents analyzed, especially in those presented at conferences organized by the BISITE group,” led by Corchado at the University of Salamanca. “This finding raises serious concerns about academic ethics within the BISITE group,” warns the report. This Salamanca team boasts of participating in multimillion-dollar projects, such as the European Network of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence dAIEDGE, with a budget of 14.4 million euros.

The new analysis identifies four platforms on which the strategy of citing the work of Corchado and his colleagues “massively and irregularly” was carried out. In addition to conference proceedings, this trick was repeated in publications edited by Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca and in documents uploaded to the academic repository of the Salamanca institution (GREDOS) or to the social network ResearchGate. “The existence of several patterns of bad practices that result in the manipulation of the academic record is confirmed,” warn the experts from the University of Granada. This newspaper has tried to obtain the rector's version throughout the day. “We are not going to make comments,” responded a spokesperson for Corchado at 19:40.

Emilio Delgado and Alberto Martín examine the case of six volumes on mobile applications and artificial intelligence published by Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca in 2019 and 2020. 79% of the more than 3,100 references in these publications are to works by Corchado or his journal ADCAIJ. In one of the volumes, entitled Parallel and Distributed Systemsthe percentage reaches 87%. In Mobile Computing and Applications85%. In The role of artificial intelligence and distributed computing in IOT applications82%. “This citation pattern is extremely anomalous, as well as problematic, since it involves a spurious use of the academic citation mechanism,” criticise the specialists from the University of Granada, who claim that at least one of these volumes has disappeared from the Internet without any explanation from Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca.

This finding raises serious concerns about academic ethics within the BISITE group. [de Corchado]

Report for the Spanish Committee on Research Ethics

“One of the aspects that we consider to be the most serious among those that have taken place during the development of this case is the systematic deletion of documents deposited in the institutional repository of the University of Salamanca, GREDOS,” point out Delgado and Martín. “We consider it extremely anomalous that an institutional repository, and we understand, the university library that manages it, agrees to delete documents from the repository without leaving a trace. It is extremely anomalous because the mission of an institutional academic repository is to preserve the memory of the research activity of its institution,” they add.

The Spanish Committee on Research Ethics, an independent body created by the Government and the autonomous communities, urged the University of Salamanca on June 11 to exercise “its powers of inspection and sanction” in view of “the alleged seriousness” of the practices of its rector. The response of the Salamanca institution was to commission a report from the historian Salvador Rus Rufino, an old acquaintance of Corchado who had even defended the rector in public. On September 9, Rus Rufino presented a superficial and exculpatory analysis, which was unanimously rejected by the 11 members of the Spanish Committee on Research Ethics, chaired by the doctor Jordi Camí, general director of the Biomedical Research Park of Barcelona.

The ethics committee requested a full investigation into Corchado on September 17, but the rector intends to consider the matter closed. “It is a matter that is already over for me,” he declared to the local press on Friday. Emilio Delgado and Alberto Martín reveal in their report that they were willing to send their analysis to Rus Rufino. “The reality has been that the Commission of the University of Salamanca has not contacted us,” they explain. Delgado and Martín have decided to make their results public this Monday.

The report prepared for the Spanish Committee on Research Ethics leaves the University of Salamanca in a very uncomfortable position, not only having a rector accused of “systematic manipulation” of his CV, but also having bad practices spread to other university bodies, such as Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca and the Library Service, ultimately responsible for the deletion of some 200 documents. The Governing Council of the University of Salamanca, made up of 53 members, approved the exculpatory report of Rus Rufino on September 11 with a very large majority. Only three professors voted against.

Delgado and Martín denounce “the elimination of information related to the case”, particularly after March 12, when EL PAÍS contacted Corchado for the primary time. “In the case of GREDOS, there is no evidence that these documents ever existed, which represents a manipulation of the academic record by concealment,” warn the authors of the report. The Granada specialists additionally level out that Corchado has deleted the texts from his weblog during which he boasted of being the fourth greatest scientist in Spain and one of many 250 greatest on the earth within the discipline of computing.