Report for Spanish Ethics Committee confirms ‘systematic manipulation’ of Salamanca University rector’s resume

A report prepared at the request of the Ethics Committee of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) certifies the “deliberate” and “systematic” manipulation of the curriculum of the rector of the University of Salamanca, Juan Manuel Corchado. The 131-page document is signed by Emilio Delgado and Alberto Martín, two of Spain’s leading experts in bibliometrics: the analysis of a person’s scientific activity. Its conclusions are compelling: 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 impact of a scientist is measured by the number of mentions or citations he or she receives in the work of other researchers, which in turn leads to reputation, promotions, and funding. The report by Delgado and Martín notes that Corchado’s resume was “artificially” embellished starting in 2017, when he lost the election for rector of the University of Salamanca on his first attempt. At that time, the already veteran professor of computer science and artificial intelligence had just 4,750 citations, a number that suddenly jumped to 15,000 in 2018, then to almost 31,000 in 2020, and 44,000 by March 2024, according to his profile on Google Scholar, which was deactivated by Corchado when EL PAÍS began to publish information about his practices.

Delgado and Martín, a professor and a lecturer at 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-congress” on computing organized each year by Corchado’s group, with a price of up to €585 ($650) per attendee. The submitted lectures, subsequently published in Springer Nature proceedings, were used to add a “precooked list” of up to 50 citations to Corchado or to the journal he edits: Advances in Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence Journal (ADCAIJ). Springer Nature has announced a massive retraction of these papers, without yet specifying a number.

On May 30, this newspaper published internal messages that showed Corchado gave instructions to his employees to add dozens of citations to himself in their studies over a period of years. The results of Delgado and Martín’s report 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 group 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.

The new analysis identifies four platforms on which the strategy of citing the work of Corchado and his colleagues was carried out “massively and irregularly.” 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 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,” conclude the experts from the University of Granada. This newspaper has attempted to obtain the rector’s version throughout the day. “We will not be making any comments,” responded a spokesperson for Corchado at 7:40 p.m.

Delgado and Martín examine the case of six volumes on mobile applications and artificial intelligence published by Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca in 2019 and 2020. Seventy-nine percent 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 Systems, the percentage reaches 87%; In Mobile Computing and Applications, 85%; In The role of artificial intelligence and distributed computing in IOT applications, 82%. “This citation pattern is extremely anomalous, as well as problematic, since it involves a spurious use of the academic citation mechanism,” note the specialists from the University of Granada, who denounce that these volumes have disappeared from the internet without Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca having provided any explanation.

“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 Ethics Committee of the Spanish National Research Council, an independent body created by the government and Spain’s autonomous regions, 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 committee, chaired by Professor Jordi Camí, general director of the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park.

The committee requested a full investigation into Corchado on September 17, but the rector considers the issue closed. “It is a matter that is already over for me,” he declared to the local press last Friday. Delgado and Martín reveal in their report that they were willing to send their analysis to Rus Rufino. “The reality is that the Commission of the University of Salamanca has not contacted us,” they explain.

The report prepared for the Ethics Committee leaves the University of Salamanca in a very uncomfortable position, not only by having a rector accused of “systematic manipulation” of his credentials, but also by those bad practices having 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,” especially after March 12, when EL PAÍS contacted Corchado for the first 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,” state the authors of the report. The specialists also point out that Corchado has deleted the texts from his blog, in which he boasted of being the fourth-best scientist in Spain and one of the 250 best in the world in the field of computing.

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