A colleague elsewhere reports that "a younger scholar this morning…told me that mid-level people are forming these rings to cite one another where they kind of cross-commit to do it to boost their citation count."  I don't know if this hearsay within hearsay is reliable or misleading, but permit me to observe that it would scholarly malpractice to use citations this way, and someone who did it would not be protected by academic freedom.   The purpose of citations are to offer support for an argument, acknowledge the work of others relevant to your argument, and to direct readers to relevant scholarship related to your argument.  There is no scholarly purpose served by "citation rings."  There are ways to detect such pattersn in citations, although I hope it won't be necessary to use them.  But if they are identified, then Deans should be encouraged to impose disciplinary measures on faculty found guilty of this kind of scholarly malpractice.

If I get further confirmation of this hearsay within hearsay then that will be a reason to cease producing lists of highly cited individual scholars in particular specialties.