[spacebanana7]

Google could solve this problem.

A new ranking boost for high reputation outbound links similar to the current boost for high reputation inbound links would encourage citations because editors would encourage the practice from journalists.

Some check might be necessary to make sure the citation fits the context of the article, however current NLP tech can manage that fairly well - and again I vaguely remember that Google has a some kind context check for outbound links too.

[Eric_WVGG]

That’s already how Google works.

The publishers either aren’t aware of that, or think captive readers are more valuable than SEO.

[spacebanana7]

Thanks for the correction, I didn't know that