[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.