Cyril Labbé received a PhD in computer science (1999) from University of Grenoble. He is a tenured professor in computer science and co-PI of the ERC-Synergy “Nano Bubbles: How, how, when and why does science fail to correct itself?”. His work on automatic detection of meaningless scientific papers, has led to retractions or withdrawals of countless computer science and bio-medical publications. He created the “scigen detection” and “seek&blastn” softwares, participated to the “Problematic Paper Screener” website, uncover the existence of “sneaked reference” and did create Ike Antkare, a fictitious scientist, that had once (dixit Google Scholar) an astonishing h-index.

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ABSTRACT:

Detection of Research Rubbish and More

Scientific papers and the citations accompanying them were originally intended to disseminate knowledge. However, they are now being treated as (ac)counting units for evaluation forming the basis of a wide range of metrics and rankings that shape the core logic of publishing activity. This has led to new types of bizarre artifacts that can be automatically detected: meaningless publications, tortured phrases, irrelevant or sneaked references, obvious errors, and more. Automatic analysis of scientific text, targeting specific misconducts, provides an actionable tool for detecting inappropriate and problematic publications.