'This is obvious gaming of the system, in order to benefit people who are being evaluated by systems that are themselves set up like some sort of game. It reminds me of the old Soviet joke, "As long as they pretend to pay me, I'll pretend to work". But surely there are better ways to spend ones time and effort - and surely the scientific literature is not served by having yet more garbage dumped into it. I know, this is all happening down in the Lower Depths of the mass of published papers, but floods of sewage need to be addressed in general even if they're not washing over your driveway.'

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/more-citation-weirdness