Citation Policy

1. Purpose

ABGS monitors citation patterns at the journal, article, issue, author, editor, editorial-board, and institutional level to protect the integrity of the scholarly record and the journal's indexing standing.

2. Prohibited Practices

ABGS prohibits coercive citation, citation stacking, citation cartels, reciprocal citation arrangements, and any request to cite work solely to influence CiteScore, Journal Impact Factor, h-index, or similar metrics.

3. Reviewer and Editor Citation Requests

Reviewers and editors may recommend additional references only where directly relevant and scholarly-justified; they must not request citations primarily benefiting themselves, their collaborators, their institution, or the journal. Authors may decline citation requests they consider irrelevant or excessive and may report inappropriate requests confidentially to the journal's independent complaints route.

4. Monitoring and Thresholds

The managing editor calculates, for every published issue, the percentage of references to the Editor-in-Chief, any editorial board member, or the Publisher in each manuscript. Where such citations are found to be scholarly relevant and reach or exceed 15% of a manuscript's total reference list, the manuscript is reassigned to a different handling editor, and the editor or board member concerned is recused from reviewer selection and from the editorial decision for that manuscript. This threshold applies regardless of whether the citations are individually justified; it is a structural safeguard, not a judgment of impropriety.

5. Classification

Findings below the threshold in Section 4 are classified as normal disciplinary concentration, elevated but explainable, or potentially excessive, taking into account field size, specialization, article type, and genuine collaborative history. Any classification other than "normal disciplinary concentration" triggers a documented relevance review before publication.

6. Corrective Actions

Where investigation finds citation manipulation, ABGS may require reference-list amendment, issue a correction, recuse the individual from future editorial involvement, or, where manipulation materially affected the publication, retract the article, per the journal's Retraction Policy.

7. Scope

This policy applies to the Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editors, editorial board members, reviewers, and the Publisher, in the same manner as any other individual associated with the journal. No individual's editorial role or ownership interest exempts them from these thresholds and procedures.

8. Annual Reporting

A summary citation-integrity report is presented to the full editorial board annually and retained as part of the journal's audit trail.