Hallucinated citations are polluting the scientific literature. What can be done?

Quill, Elizabeth

3 min read Original article ↗
  • NEWS FEATURE

Tens of thousands of publications from 2025 might include invalid references generated by AI, a Nature analysis suggests.

By

  1. Miryam Naddaf
  2. Elizabeth Quill

    1. Elizabeth Quill is a freelance editor in Washington DC.

Conceptual illustration showing a machine producing a stream of research papers and fantastical creatures.

Illustration: Adam Wójcicki

Earlier this year, computer scientist Guillaume Cabanac received a notification from Google Scholar that one of his publications had been cited in a paper published in the International Dental Journal1. That was unexpected, because his research on spotting fabricated papers doesn’t typically intersect with dentistry. “I was very surprised to see that I couldn’t recognize my own reference,” says Cabanac, who is based at the University of Toulouse in France.

Nature 652, 26-29 (2026)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-00969-z

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