Of all the stupid reasons to reject a manuscript

Manuscript rejected due to the editor's comment: "I read the paper and found it interesting. However, there are only 3 citations (out of 50) to this journal. Could the authors please bulk up citations to other numerical approaches to this journal...?" #PeerReview #SelfCitation

— Yixiang (@drgan) May 3, 2018

The whole thread is worth reading. Scroll down a ways and it turns out that the mystery journal (I admit that I wish the author would name names) is one published under Elsevier. Having dealt with Elsevier's journals as either an author or reviewer, let's just say that the experiences generally left a bad taste in my mouth. I'm increasingly hesitant to submit anything in any of its journals relevant to me. That's a set of stories for another time. In this case the question is one of authors' work rejected for not citing the specific journal's articles enough. That's a problem. Authors cite the work that is relevant to their specific research question, or at least that is what they should do and nothing more. They do not cite work simply to stroke an editor's ego, or to give the journal in question a greater citation count and hence greater impact factor. That the authors were essentially given an ultimatum to cite stuff from this mystery journal for....um....reasons?...is not acceptable, and I am glad that the authors are choosing not to resubmit to that journal.