In analyzing article metadata, where unusual patterns of citations and downloads had been found to occur, researchers found cases where “invisible” references, not cited in the article, had been embedded in article metadata, with the effect of artificially inflating citation counts for those cited articles. 

As a precautionary measure, in working with cited references, it is advisable to consult with multiple sources, and where possible, to understand how the citation information is derived.

From https://phys.org/news/2024-07-scientific-fraud-uncovering.html

Citation counts for certain researchers or journals have skyrocketed, even though these references were not cited by the authors in their articles…

Google Scholar found none, but Crossref and Dimensions did find references. The difference? Google Scholar is likely to mostly rely on the article's main text to extract the references appearing in the bibliography section, whereas Crossref and Dimensions use metadata provided by publishers.

Original post:

https://theconversation.com/when-scientific-citations-go-rogue-uncovering-sneaked-references-233858

Link to cited preprint:

Sneaked references: Cooked reference metadata inflate citation counts
Lonni Besançon, Guillaume Cabanac, Cyril Labbé, Alexander Magazinov
https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.02192