[Lgpolicy] Hallucinated citations are polluting the scientific literature. What can be done?

[Francis M. Hult via Lgpolicy]

[Moderator's note: This is not unique to our field, but it is an important
issue so I thought I would share the article.  FMH]

Nature

Hallucinated citations are polluting the scientific literature. What can be
done?

An exclusive analysis conducted by Nature’s news team, in collaboration
with Grounded AI, a company based in Stevenage, UK, suggests that at least
tens of thousands of 2025 publications, including journal papers and books,
as well as conference proceedings, probably contain invalid references
generated by AI.

Grounded AI is among the companies offering publishers tools for screening
submissions for problematic references. Several publishers told Nature
reporters that they have been exploring such tools or developing in-house
versions.

But some researchers are concerned that the problem will soon get out of
hand. “We’re going to see a flood of fake references,” says Alison
Johnston, a political scientist at Oregon State University in Corvallis.

Another issue is deciding what to do about hallucinated citations that make
it into the published literature. That’s a problem that academic publishers
are wrestling with right now.

Full story:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00969-z
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