[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-detail-84127-en":3,"doc-seo-84127-105":30,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":91},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",{"doc_id":7,"user_id":8,"nickname":9,"user_avatar":10,"doc_module":4,"category_id":11,"category_name":12,"doc_title":13,"doc_description":14,"doc_content":15,"file_id":16,"file_url":17,"file_type":18,"file_size":19,"view_count":20,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":21,"is_downloadable":21,"audit_status":21,"page_count":22,"language":23,"language_code":24,"site_id":25,"html_lang":24,"table_of_contents":26,"faqs":27,"seo_title":13,"seo_description":14,"update_tm":28,"read_time":29},84127,687197207057,"Sage","https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_29158cc5080c5b710cf443261637dec0",8,"Research & Report","Trust-Aware Citation Cartel Ranking in Scholarly Knowledge Graphs","Citation-based scholarly systems often assume each citation is an equal signal of influence, despite citations encoding different intents such as method use, result comparison, supportive background, or ceremonial acknowledgement. This ambiguity complicates citation-cartel detection because legitimate communities can also be dense and interconnected. The work presents a trust-aware pipeline combining citation-graph structure with semantic citation intent to rank suspicious paper-level communities for audit. Using a DBLP graph and LLM-labeled intent data, it trains a SciBERT model and computes a Composite Cartel Index (CCI).","Trust-Aware Citation Cartel Ranking in Scholarly Knowledge  \nGraphs  \narXiv :2607 .06528v 1 [ cs . SI ] 7 Jul 2026  \nPratyush Gupta  \n[pratyush22375@iiitd.ac.in](pratyush22375@iiitd.ac.in)[ ](pratyush22375@iiitd.ac.in)IIIT Delhi, India  \nVikranth Udandarao  \n[vikranth22570@iiitd.ac.in](vikranth22570@iiitd.ac.in)[ ](vikranth22570@iiitd.ac.in)IIIT Delhi, India  \nSyam Sai Santosh Bandi  \n[syam22528@iiitd.ac.in](syam22528@iiitd.ac.in)[ ](syam22528@iiitd.ac.in)IIIT Delhi, India  \nAbstract  \nCitation-based systems usually treat each citation as an equal signal of scholarly influence, although citations can express very different relationships: direct method use, result comparison, broad background, or weak ceremonial acknowledgement. This distinction is crucial for citation-cartel analysis because dense internal citation alone is not suspicious; legitimate research communities are also densely connected. We present a trust-aware pipeline that combines citation graph structure with semantic citation intent to rank suspicious paper-level communities for audit. On a DBLP-derived graph with 500,000 papers and 4.87M citation edges, we use an LLM teacher to label 205,897 citation pairs, train a SciBERT student, and scale citation-intent typing to 2.04M unique graph edges. We then compute a Composite Cartel Index (CCI) that integrates internal density, citation inflation, reciprocity, semantic superficiality, degree assortativity, and trust-weighted PageRank shift. The highest-ranked community contains 1,079 papers and 8,603 internal citations, with 254.3x more internal citations than expected and 64.2% of them superficial. Comparisons against density-only, inflation-only, semantic-only, and random baselines show that CCI cannot be reduced to a single heuristic. Edge excision validation further shows that CCI-selected communities behave differently from matched random removals. The result is a reproducible, curatorfacing ranking framework for prioritising communities that warrant closer inspection.  \nCCS Concepts  \n• Computing methodologies → Anomaly detection; • Theory of computation → Graph algorithms analysis; • Applied computing → Bibliographic studies.  \nKeywords  \nscholarly knowledge graphs, citation cartels, citation intent, SciBERT, graph anomaly detection, PageRank  \n1 Introduction and Related Work  \nScholarly knowledge graphs (SKGs) such as Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, OpenCitations, and Microsoft Academic Graph encode papers and citations as large directed graphs used for search, recommendation, bibliometrics, and expert discovery [13, 21, 22, 24] . However, citation edges are semantically heterogeneous: a citation may indicate method reuse, result comparison, support, criticism, background context, or a ceremonial mention [9, 12, 23] . This limits the common assumption that citations provide uniform evidence of influence. Related work in scientometrics has similarly argued that  \n,  \ncitation impact is multidimensional and field-dependent, motivating indicators that go beyond raw citation counts or unweighted citation links [7, 15, 17] .  \nThis ambiguity is central to identifying suspicious citation communities. Prior work has studied coercive and coordinated citation behavior at journal and author levels [11, 14, 25], including nullmodel approaches that compare within-group citation exchange against expectations accounting for journal size and scientific communities. Graph anomaly detection methods identify unusual structures using density, reciprocity, degree patterns, or community structure [1, 16] . Yet paper-level ranking in SKGs remains difficult because legitimate research areas are also modular and internally dense [6, 19]. Topology-only methods can therefore conflate suspicious reinforcement with ordinary scholarly communities.  \nCitation-intent classification provides a complementary signal. Prior work has classified citation functions from local citation contexts and scientific-paper structure [9, 12, 23], and recent ","cbCaif1CK55nTIyt","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaif1CK55nTIyt","pdf",2441108,3,1,5,"English","en",105,"# Introduction and Related Work\n## Problem framing: trust-aware suspicious community ranking\n## Research questions and contributions\n# Methodology\n## Graph topology and profiling","[{\"question\":\"Why is citation-cartel detection difficult in scholarly knowledge graphs?\",\"answer\":\"Citations are semantically heterogeneous and do not always provide uniform evidence of influence. Dense internal citation patterns can also occur in legitimate research communities.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the proposed approach incorporate citation intent into detection?\",\"answer\":\"It uses a teacher–student pipeline where an LLM labels citation pairs and a SciBERT student learns to type citation intent at scale, producing semantic signals for community ranking.\"},{\"question\":\"What is the Composite Cartel Index (CCI)?\",\"answer\":\"CCI is a community-level ranking score that integrates structural inflation, reciprocity, semantic superficiality, degree assortativity, and a trust-weighted PageRank shift to prioritize communities for audit.\"}]",1784193143,13,{"code":4,"msg":31,"data":32},"ok",{"site_id":25,"language":24,"slug":33,"title":13,"keywords":34,"description":14,"schema_data":35,"social_meta":86,"head_meta":88,"extra_data":90,"updated_unix":28},"trust-aware-citation-cartel-ranking-in-scholarly-knowledge-graphs","",{"@graph":36,"@context":85},[37,53,68],{"@type":38,"itemListElement":39},"BreadcrumbList",[40,44,48,50],{"item":41,"name":42,"@type":43,"position":21},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":45,"name":46,"@type":43,"position":47},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",2,{"item":49,"name":12,"@type":43,"position":20},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",{"item":51,"name":13,"@type":43,"position":52},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/trust-aware-citation-cartel-ranking-in-scholarly-knowledge-graphs/84127/",4,{"url":51,"name":13,"@type":54,"author":55,"headline":13,"publisher":57,"fileFormat":60,"inLanguage":24,"description":14,"dateModified":61,"datePublished":62,"encodingFormat":60,"isAccessibleForFree":63,"interactionStatistic":64},"DigitalDocument",{"name":9,"@type":56},"Person",{"url":41,"name":58,"@type":59},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-07-27","2026-07-16",true,{"@type":65,"interactionType":66,"userInteractionCount":20},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":67},"ViewAction",{"@type":69,"mainEntity":70},"FAQPage",[71,77,81],{"name":72,"@type":73,"acceptedAnswer":74},"Why is citation-cartel detection difficult in scholarly knowledge graphs?","Question",{"text":75,"@type":76},"Citations are semantically heterogeneous and do not always provide uniform evidence of influence. Dense internal citation patterns can also occur in legitimate research communities.","Answer",{"name":78,"@type":73,"acceptedAnswer":79},"How does the proposed approach incorporate citation intent into detection?",{"text":80,"@type":76},"It uses a teacher–student pipeline where an LLM labels citation pairs and a SciBERT student learns to type citation intent at scale, producing semantic signals for community ranking.",{"name":82,"@type":73,"acceptedAnswer":83},"What is the Composite Cartel Index (CCI)?",{"text":84,"@type":76},"CCI is a community-level ranking score that integrates structural inflation, reciprocity, semantic superficiality, degree assortativity, and a trust-weighted PageRank shift to prioritize communities for audit.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":51,"og:type":87,"og:title":13,"og:site_name":58,"og:description":14},"article",{"robots":89,"canonical":51},"index,follow",{"doc_id":7,"site_id":25},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":92},[93,97,101,105,109,114,119,122,127,130,134],{"id":21,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":94,"show_sort_weight":95,"slug":96},"Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":47,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":98,"show_sort_weight":99,"slug":100},"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":52,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":102,"show_sort_weight":103,"slug":104},"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":22,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":106,"show_sort_weight":107,"slug":108},"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":110,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":111,"show_sort_weight":112,"slug":113},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":115,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":116,"show_sort_weight":117,"slug":118},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":11,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":12,"show_sort_weight":120,"slug":121},30,"research-report",{"id":123,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":124,"show_sort_weight":125,"slug":126},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":125,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":128,"show_sort_weight":125,"slug":129},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":131,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":132,"show_sort_weight":131,"slug":133},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":135,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":136,"show_sort_weight":22,"slug":137},19,"General","general"]