After sexual misconduct accusations, scholars’ work is cited less

In a new analysis, scholars publicly accused of sexual misconduct experienced a significant decrease in the rate at which other scholars cited their published research. Giulia Maimone of the University of California, Los Angeles, U.S., and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS One on March 5, 2025.

In academia, scholars cite other scholars’ publications as a widely agreed-upon way to reference existing research and promote scientific advancement. A scholar with a high number of citations may be considered particularly impactful in their field. Prior research suggests that the decision to cite a given publication can be influenced by more than just its quality and relevance; for example, scholars may be more likely to cite their friends’ research.

However, whether scholars might also avoid citing the work of their peers accused of immoral behavior has been unclear. To examine this possibility, Maimone and colleagues compared citation rates for scholars accused of sexual misconduct to those for scholars accused of scientific misconduct (for instance, data fabrication or plagiarism) and to rates for scholars without any accusations. The dataset included 31,941 publications for 172 scholars across 18 disciplines.

Statistical analysis of the data showed that, during the first three years after public accusation, scholars accused of sexual misconduct had their work cited significantly less, while scholars accused of scientific misconduct did not experience a significant citation decrease. These findings suggest that sexual misconduct is a key factor unrelated to the merit of research that may nonetheless influence citation rates.

Maimone and colleagues also surveyed 240 academic scholars and 231 non-academics on their attitudes about citing works of accused scholars. The non-academics reported greater aversion to sexual than scientific misconduct. However, the scholars said they would be more likely to cite scholars accused of sexual than scientific misconduct – which runs contrary to the citation rate findings.

Future research could address some of this study’s limitations, such as by including a larger number of accused scholars and examining a longer period of time post-accusation. Nonetheless, the researchers note, this study could help raise awareness of potential bias and help scholars make more informed citation decisions.

The authors add: “Anecdotally, we saw some consumers boycotting the music of recording artists accused of sexual misconduct. We realized that while in some contexts it might make sense to penalize the work of individuals accused of immoral behavior, in others, such as science, the issue is not as straightforward. This is the first paper to systematically compare the ramifications of sexual and scientific misconduct on the citations of alleged perpetrators.”

In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS One: https://plos.io/41pbV0c

Citation: Maimone G, Appel G, McKenzie CRM, Gneezy A (2025) Citation penalties following sexual versus scientific misconduct allegations. PLoS ONE 20(3): e0317736. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0317736

Author countries: U.S.

Funding: National Science Foundation grant (SES-2049935) to C.R.M.M. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.