I think undoubtedly the reason for "investigating" this now is the optics for Elsevier. They are bad guys in the eyes of most people right now. The main eviden

I think undoubtedly the reason for "investigating" this now is the optics for Elsevier. They are bad guys in the eyes of most people right now. The main evidence I have for this claim, is that coercive citations are so common as to be a trope in PhD comics and the like. Moreover it is bleeping obvious to the editor, when they receive a review by M. Ister that suggests 10+ new references to M. Ister et al., that this is going on.