The core problem here is that universities think that citation statistics are a useful metric to evaluate the quality of the work of a scientist. There's plenty of evidence that this is not the case or that even the reverse may be the case [1], but this idea refuses to die. [1]
It sucks as a metric but it does have some rough correlation in most cases, and I'm not aware of any better easily measurable metric - if you have one in mind, it'd be great to hear. The alternative of having a bureaucrat "simply judge quality" IMHO is even worse, even less objective, and even more prone to being gamed. The main problem is that there is an objective need (or desire?) by various stakeholders to have s…
Why should an easily measurable metric which has meaningful value exist? It doesn't seem obvious to me that it should at all. Determining the capability of a researcher is inherently a very complex intellectual task. The desire is to reduce that task to something which removes the need for the person doing the evaluation to read and understand the produced research, or to even understand the field of study in many cases. Perhaps, instead, those who are put in charge of things like awarding grant funding, granting tenure at universities, and deciding who to hire to teach ought to be expected and required to evaluate the research on its merits. This would greatly increase the intellectual sophistication and capability needed for people in those positions, but the alternative will always be fairly easily exploitable because it is easier to goose a metric than to do solid research.
We see the shortcomings of trying to reduce complex intellectual challenges to checklists or metrics all the time. And we simply ignore the alternative of relying upon intellectually capable people meeting the challenge. Personally, I don't understand why.