{"doi":"10.1371/journal.pone.0328531","title":"Features and signals in precocious citation impact: A meta-research study","abstract":"The current analysis aimed to evaluate the profiles of scientists who reach top citation impact in a very short time once they start publishing. Precocious citation impact was defined as rising to become a top-cited scientist within t ≤ 8 years after the first publication year. Ultra-precocious citation impact was defined similarly for t ≤ 5 years. Top-cited authors included those in the top-2% of a previously validated composite citation indicator across 174 subfields of science or in the top-100,000 authors of that composite citation indicator across all science based on Scopus. Annual data between 2017 and 2023 show a strong increase over time, with 469 precocious and 66 ultra-precocious citation impact author profiles in 2023. In-depth assessment of validated ultra-precocious scientists in 2023, showed significantly higher frequency of less developed country affiliation; clustering in 4 high-risk subfields; high self-citations for their field; being top-cited only when self-citations were included; high citations to citing papers ratio for their field; extreme publishing behavior; extreme citation orchestration metric c/h2; and high percentage of citations given to first-authored papers compared with all top-cited authors (p < 0.005 for all signals). The 17 ultra-precocious citation impact authors in the 2017-2020 top-cited lists who had retractions showed on average 4.1 of these 8 signal indicators at the time they entered the top-cited list. In conclusion, while some authors with precocious citation impact may be stellar scientists, others probably herald massive manipulative or fraudulent behaviors infiltrating the scientific literature.","journal":"PLOS One","year":2025,"id":1339,"datarank":0.20794415416798362,"base_score":1.3862943611198906,"endowment":1.3862943611198906,"self_citation_contribution":0.20794415416798362,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.20794415416798362,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":3,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.0367,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-08-06","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":148,"name":"John P. A. Ioannidis","orcid":"0000-0003-3118-6859","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":57,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-03-01T18:20:47.508186Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}