AI Insight
A study analyzing four research repositories identified more than 140,000 fabricated citations in papers and preprints published during 2025 alone, with the highest concentration found in social sciences preprint platforms. These hallucinated citations are understood to be generated by AI language models that produce plausible-sounding but nonexistent references when used to assist in academic writing. The findings point to a measurable and growing problem of AI-assisted citation fabrication infiltrating the scientific literature pipeline.
Why it matters
The large-scale presence of fake citations undermines the integrity of scientific communication and the reliability of literature reviews and meta-analyses that depend on accurate sourcing. This trend poses a systemic risk to how knowledge is built and verified across disciplines, particularly in fields with less rigorous pre-publication screening.
Nature, Published online: 14 May 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-01545-1
More than 140,000 fake citations across four research repositories were identified in papers and preprints published in 2025 alone.
Source: Hallucinated citations highest in social sciences preprints site