This article documents hijacking of articles in plant science, highlighting risks of fake accounts and co-opted identity.
This article documents a unique case of “Robert Garcia,” a hijacker of 74 articles (71 in open access), published between 2017 and 2025 in the field of plant science that are indexed at ResearchGate (RG), having co-opted the name and identity of an actual researcher and an author of papers published between 1983 and 2006 in the field of child psychology and pediatrics. This case underscores the risk of accounts at RG with fake elements, the co-opting of other researchers’ published papers, and building a network based almost entirely on hijacked intellect, with a corresponding set of metrics.
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Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva (2026) studied this question.
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