A 15-word grammatically incorrect sentence has appeared in hundreds of research papers from the privately run Saveetha group of higher educational institutions in India, puzzling academics and prompting questions about possible citation manipulation and research misconduct.
Multiple papers from Saveetha, written by different sets of coauthors, contain the exact line, "Our team has extensive knowledge and research experience that has translate into high quality publications," followed by numerous citations to other papers from Saveetha.
The diversity of these papers and their authors, experts say, suggests a coordinated effort to boost citation counts, a key measure in global and national rankings of educational institutions. In 2024, the Centre had ranked Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical Sciences (SIMATS) 11th among 1,500 private and public universities, while Saveetha Dental College topped national rankings for the third consecutive year.
A faculty member representing Saveetha said no one in the institution’s academic or administrative departments had ever directed faculty or students to use the sentence. "The contents of papers are the responsibility of their authors — not the institution," the spokesperson said. "And many of the authors of these papers are no longer with Saveetha institutions.”
Members of India’s academic community say the repeated use of the 15-word sentence raises broader concerns about institutions manipulating citation counts, the integrity of academic publishing, and the accountability of those who monitor it.
"The probability that different sets of authors independently wrote different papers with the exact same sentence, the typo included, is astronomically tiny," said Gautam Menon, dean of research and professor of physics and biology at Ashoka University, Sonipat, Haryana. “What would seem more likely is a copy-paste job from the same template where the authors didn’t even bother to correct the typo.”
A search for papers with this sentence via Google Scholar on May 25 yielded 633 results since 2021 — 156 publications in 2021, 409 in 2022, 45 in 2023, 10 in 2024, and 13 in 2025. The papers are from authors from biomedical engineering, computer science, endodontics, microbiology, and prosthodontics, among others.
"The institution appears to have devised a scheme of gaining citations at an industrial scale," said Partha Majumder, a population geneticist and former president of the Indian Academy of Sciences. Each time a paper cites earlier papers from Saveetha, the citation counts for the earlier papers — and for Saveetha — grow. One 2019 paper from Saveetha has 169 citations, of which 165 are in papers from Saveetha, Majumder said.
Majumder and others believe the pattern reflects a deliberate strategy of inserting intra-institutional citations, whether relevant or not, to inflate citation counts.
"Nothing prevents authors from adding citations in this manner, but the ethical question is whether the citations are actually relevant," Menon said. "During the peer-review process, a referee might not look too carefully at the papers cited and would assume they are germane to the discussion."
Some citations, however, appear unrelated to the paper’s subject. A 2022 Saveetha paper on fruit and vegetable consumption among dental students, for instance, cited another Saveetha study on the response of diesel engines to certain additives. "It boggles the mind how a paper on fruits and vegetables consumption can be related diesel engines,” said a physicist in a central government institution.
In response to queries sent by this newspaper, Saveetha said it had conducted "an internal review" three years ago and asked authors to take "corrective" steps. "Since then, there have been no further instances of concern," the faculty spokesperson said.
Follow-up emails to the registrar and another faculty member, pointing out that papers containing the sentence have appeared even in 2025, were unanswered. Queries about why a nutrition study paper cited a diesel engine also received no response.
Defending the institution’s research performance, the spokesperson said: "Even without self-citations, Saveetha and SIMATS continue to lead in both volume and quality of publications. We have more top-quartile journals than any other institution in India — more than twice that of the leading IITs, despite their higher funding levels. That speaks to the strength of our research ecosystem."
The institution said the sentence likely originated within a single research group and was reused across its papers. It did not respond to a follow-up query, noting that the papers in question came from different departments and unrelated author teams.
A senior scientist at a central government university said the citation patterns highlight a broader concern: the ease with which current ranking systems can be manipulated.