Coercive citation practices describe situations in which an author feels pressure to add superfluous citations to their paper in order to get published. This coercion may come from peer reviewers, seeking to increase citations to their own work, or from editors seeking to bolster citations to their journal.
Note that not all citation recommendations are coercive: reviewer or editor criticism regarding the need to add missing citations to relevant literature may be part of an acceptable critique.
"In an effort to promote their journal’s visibility via a higher Impact Factor, some journal editors ask new authors submitting manuscripts to their journal to embed inappropriate citations in their papers. When an editor practices leverage over an author before issuing a disposition about reject/accept, then that can easily feel coercive."
- Caven Mcloughlin, 9 Oct 2017, "How to identify coercive citation requests from an editor," Editage Insights
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