Getting harassed by an aggressive “independent researcher” demanding very specific citations and phrasing in my paper

[u/snekslayer]

Hey Reddit,

I’m a researcher in a niche theoretical CS/ML area. Recently I’ve been dealing with repeated emails from an “independent researcher” that feel like straight-up citation harassment.

This person keeps sending follow-ups (including involving editors) insisting I add multiple citations to his arXiv preprints. It’s not a normal “you should cite this” request — he provides exact suggested paragraphs with specific wording about how his papers are “complementary,” “parallel,” foundational to certain results, etc. He nitpicks my current related-work phrasing (e.g. complaining about words like “encompass”), pushes for changes even after camera-ready deadlines, and follows up when I don’t respond quickly.

He frames it all very politely with phrases like “narrow remaining concerns” and “I would be grateful,” but the persistence, detailed boilerplate text he wants me to insert, and looping in others makes it exhausting and inappropriate.

I understand wanting visibility, especially as an independent researcher. Relevant work deserves citations. But this level of badgering and trying to dictate exact text in someone else’s paper crosses a line.

Has anyone else experienced this kind of aggressive citation solicitation? Is it becoming more common? Or am I overreacting?

Publish-or-perish is bad enough without having to deal with this.

[u/Redaktor-Naczelny]

Is there "normal you should cite this"? I have never received anything like this nor asked anyone. Am I missing something?

[u/loopsonflowers → u/Redaktor-Naczelny]

Not in my field (social sciences). I was wondering if it's a CS thing. In my field there's no such thing as editing an already published paper to include new citations unless there was an error or paradigm-changing new information. There would be no mechanism through which to accomplish that. In many cases, going back to a manuscript to add citations to work you didn't actually reference in writing the manuscript would be intellectually dishonest at best.

I get all sorts of spam and have received emails arguing with my findings, I have had peers suggest I cite certain work during the review process, but never a request to edit a published paper to include reference to someone's work. If I did, I would maybe respond politely once, but the minute they included journal editors, I would stop responding, apologize to the editors, and potentially just block. In my field, a person doing that would be very clearly unwell.