Title How a Citation Error Became Certified Knowledge
Author(s) Laboratory of Information Systems
Affiliation New Euro Vision: exhibitions, marketing, research s.r.o.
Country Czech Republic
Contribution type case study; empirical study; conceptual paper; methodological paper
Thematic area • Theory, Methodology, and Evidence
Conference framework connection • Analytical Track AT-01 — provisional title to be defined• Analytical Track AT-02 — provisional title to be defined• Analytical Track AT-03 — provisional title to be defined• Analytical Track AT-04 — provisional title to be defined• Analytical Track AT-05 — provisional title to be defined• Analytical Track AT-06 — provisional title to be defined• Analytical Track AT-07 — provisional title to be defined
Abstract Research on the environmental consequences of war is frequently described as scarce. In such an emerging field, however, the existence of a publication can be mistaken for evidence of reliable knowledge. This paper examines that risk through a close reading of O. A. Gordienko’s 2025 review, “Impact of War on Soils,” published in Eurasian Soil Science. The purpose is not to infer the circumstances of authorship or the intentions of any participant. It is to ask how a text with elementary, visible, and mutually reinforcing defects acquired the authority of an indexed review article and was then invoked as evidence that the subject was receiving scholarly attention.
The method combines citation tracing, quantitative reconstruction, conceptual analysis of the research object, bibliographic audit, and genre analysis. The central numerical claim provides a tracer. The review states that war-affected areas cover 121,406 km², or 0.024% of Earth. Its cited source instead describes approximately 30 million acres in the global real-estate portfolio of the United States Department of Defense. Converted into square kilometres, that figure becomes 121,406 km²; divided by the whole surface of Earth, including oceans, it becomes 0.024%. Military-administered land was therefore transformed into war-affected soil by category substitution.
The same failure recurs at other levels. “Soil” is not operationally defined; only six soil taxa are named and none structures the comparison. The Russia-Ukraine war is represented through one Russian source, while Ukrainian research on damaged Ukrainian soils is effectively absent. Russia disappears as an agent and as a potentially affected territory. The conclusion neither evaluates the reviewed evidence nor identifies a research architecture, contradiction, uncertainty, or knowledge gap.
Taken together, these are not one accidental miscitation. They form a patterned failure of source verification, object construction, geographic representation, synthesis, peer review, editorial control, indexing, and expert reading. The case shows how scholarly certification can validate the signs of knowledge without validating the practices that produce knowledge.
Key points • A central global estimate is produced by converting U.S. military real estate into war-affected land.
• The article repeatedly says “soil” but does not construct differentiated soils as an analytical object.
• The bibliography makes Ukraine visible as damaged territory while marginalising Ukrainian knowledge production.
• The formal conclusion does not perform the evidential synthesis expected of a review article.
• The error survived a chain of scholarly certification and therefore functions as a tracer of systemic failure.
Keywords war-related soil degradation; literature review; citation verification; peer review; scholarly publishing; Ukraine; epistemic responsibility; research quality
Main discussion question What kind of publication system allows a thematically important but methodologically weak text to pass through authorship, review, editorial control, indexing, and expert reading without its central defects becoming consequential?
OJS publication link https://pollution-diseases-ojs.org/index.php/pd/article/view/86
Note. Analytical TracksIn addition to the main thematic areas, the conference programme will include several cross-cutting analytical tracks. These tracks will be defined during the preparation of the programme, based on the submitted abstracts and the emerging links between presentations.At the preliminary stage, abstracts may be assigned to provisional analytical tracks marked as AT-01 to AT-07. Final track titles will be announced after the Scientific Committee has reviewed the submitted materials.