Hallucinated citations are polluting scientific literature. What can be done?

> Johnston says she is taking a hard line: when such a citation is found in a submission to RIPE, she says, the authors are prohibited from resubmitting the work to the journal.

This is the way to go. The other journals are being too nice.

A middle ground might be to ban them for 5 years. If they do it again after the ban, then they get a lifetime ban.

Put the burden on the researcher. If they are unwilling to take on this task, what other corners did they cut?