[tbrownaw]

Is this not already a thing? You can look up purported papers by DOI, and whatever journal it came from supposedly had it reviewed and should know who sent it to them.

(And if that doesn't work, how is what you're suggesting meaningfully different?)

[Barrin92]

It's not at all a thing. Here's a recent study looking at citation fraud on Google Scholar including professional citation boosting services including with fake identities. It's widespread practice. https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.04607

Having a machine verifiable, cryptographic identity system that renders these kinds of things transparent, basically the equivalent of a ledger but instead of using it for get-rich schemes using it for identity would probably make verification enforceable.