Cyagen also makes stem cells and other bio-research materials: they'll pay academics $100 in vouchers per citation, multiplied by the impact factor of the journal in which the paper is published.
The company has apparently been at this for some time, and it raises worrying questions about conflict of interest in medical research, a field already plagued by conflict of interest scandals.
To be clear, I am not accusing any individual academic author of receiving funds from Cyagen, and failing to declare it. It is quite possible that the authors of these 164 specific papers have cited Cyagen without choosing to cash in on their incentive scheme. However, it is clear that Cyagen have been offering this incentive for a long time, because they discuss it on their page as if payment is commonplace. Therefore it is reasonable to believe that some of the researchers in the 164 papers listed on the link above have received funds from Cyagen, in exchange for an academic citation. The question, then, is: who? And did they declare it in the paper?
As I said, journal editors and publishers may want to investigate a situation where authors have received undisclosed funds in exchange for a citation. And anybody with some spare time, who is interested in a little productive procrastination on this Friday afternoon, may want to go through some or all of those 164 papers that Cyagen list as citing them, in order to see if any one of them has declared receiving money from the company. In a spirit of opennness, Cyagen may also wish to specify which authors they have paid for citations.
So this company Cyagen is paying authors for citations in academic papers [Ben Goldacre]
