Between January 1st and 10th, 2025, twenty-three articles published on Springer Nature titles were retracted. Twelve of them (52%) do not cite any previous articles from the authors, namely "ZERO self-citation". This phenomenon raises a question for the scientific community: Is zero self-citation an indicator for problematic articles?
Recent investigation suggests that the handling editor of the article did not disclose his conflict of interest with the author.
Recent investigation suggests that an article has high proportion (about 13%) references to its handling editor Rima Chatterjee, raising concerns that Chatterjee took advantages of her editorial role to promote her citations.
An Investigation by the 5GH Team reveals that the articles published on the Special Issue "Geomicrobiology: Latest Advances and Prospects" have high proportions of references to Cesareo Saiz-Jimenez, one of the special issue's guest editors, suggesting potential misconduct by Saiz-Jimenez to promote his citations with his editorial role on the special issue.
Up to recently, Springer Nature have retracted 59 articles due to "irregularities with respect to submission, authorship, and peer review", "irregularities with respect to submission and authorship", "irregularities in authorship during the submission process" and other similar reasons. 58% (34/59) of them have zero self-citation, suggesting that "ZERO self-citation" may be an indicator for problematic articles.