FW: [EXT] [Edling] Hallucinated citations are polluting the scientific literature. What can be done?
Curry, MJ
Fyi
Mary Jane Curry, PhD (she/her/hers)
Emerita Professor of Teaching and Curriculum
Warner Graduate School of Education & Human Development
University of Rochester
https://rochester.zoom.us/my/mjcurry
Director, Warner Writing Support Services
Co-editor, Studies in Knowledge Production and Participation book series, Multilingual Matters
Academic writing/publishing/career coach and consultant: www.mjcurry.co
Book in process: Curry, M.J. Class notes: A Pittsburgh education
From:
Edling <edling-...@lists.mail.umbc.edu> on behalf of "Francis M. Hult via Edling" <edl...@lists.mail.umbc.edu>
Reply-To: Educational Linguistics List <edl...@lists.mail.umbc.edu>
Date: Monday, April 6, 2026 at 12:14 PM
To: Educational Linguistics List <edl...@lists.mail.umbc.edu>
Cc: "Francis M. Hult" <fmh...@umbc.edu>
Subject: [EXT] [Edling] Hallucinated citations are polluting the scientific literature. What can be done?
[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