At the University of Technology in Baghdad, students must publish papers citing the school’s own journals if they wish to graduate. But down the road at Mustansiriyah University, one of Iraq’s highest-ranked institutions, researchers are facing even steeper citation requirements, according to new evidence we obtained.

In a letter sent to the school’s six research centers on September 18, 2025, the university council requires researchers to be first authors on at least two "of the legal minimum of three research papers" they must publish every year. Each of these papers must cite at least three articles other faculty members at the school have published in Scopus-indexed journals, as well as one or more articles in the university’s own publications. The newsletter Fraud Factor posted a translation of the letter, as well as additional documents on citation requirements for postgraduate students.

Some researchers "might become really afraid of getting fired, for example, because there is a pressure on them to publish", said Lokman Meho, a university librarian and professor at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. "They will do all it takes, even if it is cheating, even if it is unethical, to meet those requirements. So this is where the government and the universities are incentivizing and forcing people to do unethical things."

Source https://retractionwatch.com/2025/10/27/mustansiriyah-university-iraq-researchers-must-cite-colleagues-school-journals-in-papers/

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