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1 – 10 of 497Mohammad Reza Davarpanah and Farzaneh Amel
The purpose of this paper is to study the author self‐citation behavior in four disciplines: electronic engineering, general and internal medicine, organic chemistry and plant…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to study the author self‐citation behavior in four disciplines: electronic engineering, general and internal medicine, organic chemistry and plant sciences.
Design/methodology/approach
By using SCI and random stratified method 1,000 articles were analysed as a sample in the four disciplines during 2004‐2006.
Findings
It was found that about 60 per cent of the articles in the four disciplines' literature contained at least one self‐citation. Four disciplines all showed skewed distributions of articles citation rates, either self‐citation or other citations. Organic chemistry articles had the highest self‐citations than the other disciplines. Share of self‐citation decreases with growing time window. The expected self‐citation rate increased with growing number of citation, co‐authorship and author productivity.
Originality/value
The outcomes of this study suggest that self‐citation indicators should be used as supplementary indicators in evaluative bibliometrics.
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Tariq Ahmad Shah, Sumeer Gul and Ramesh C Gaur
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the author self-citation behavior in the field of Library and Information Science. Various factors governing the author self-citation…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the author self-citation behavior in the field of Library and Information Science. Various factors governing the author self-citation behavior have also been studied.
Design/methodology/approach
The 2012 edition of Social Science Citation Index was consulted for the selection of LIS journals. Under the subject heading “Information Science and Library Science” there were 84 journals and out of these 12 journals were selected for the study based on systematic sampling. The study was confined to original research and review articles that were published in select journals in the year 2009. The main reason to choose 2009 was to get at least five years (2009-2013) citation data from Web of Science Core Collection (excluding Book Citation Index) and SciELO Citation Index. A citation was treated as self-citation whenever one of the authors of citing and cited paper was common, i.e., the set of co-authors of the citing paper and that of the cited one are not disjoint. To minimize the risk of homonyms, spelling variances and misspelling in authors’ names, the authors compared full author names in citing and cited articles.
Findings
A positive correlation between number of authors and total number of citations exists with no correlation between number of authors and number/share of self-citations, i.e., self-citations are not affected by the number of co-authors in a paper. Articles which are produced in collaboration attract more self-citations than articles produced by only one author. There is no statistically significant variation in citations counts (total and self-citations) in works that are result of different types of collaboration. A strong and statistically significant positive correlation exists between total citation count and frequency of self-citations. No relation could be ascertained between total citation count and proportion of self-citations. Authors tend to cite more of their recent works than the work of other authors. Total citation count and number of self-citations are positively correlated with the impact factor of source publication and correlation coefficient for total citations is much higher than that for self-citations. A negative correlation exhibits between impact factor and the share of self-citations. Of particular note is that the correlation in all the cases is of weak nature.
Research limitations/implications
The research provides an understanding of the author self-citations in the field of LIS. readers are encouraged to further the study by taking into account large sample, tracing citations also from Book Citation Index (WoS) and comparing results with other allied subjects so as to validate the robustness of the findings of this study.
Originality/value
Readers are encouraged to further the study by taking into account large sample, tracing citations also from Book Citation Index (WoS) and comparing results with other allied subjects so as to validate the robustness of the findings of this study.
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The purpose of the present investigation was to determine to what extent authors of scientific articles cite their previous publications and what are the principal distinguishing…
Abstract
The purpose of the present investigation was to determine to what extent authors of scientific articles cite their previous publications and what are the principal distinguishing features of this particular type of citation. We have analysed the bibliographies of a group of articles from the areas of plant physiology and neurobiology, and have examined the relationship of the self‐citations to some characteristics of the articles in which they occurred. We found self‐citations to be more recent and to be cited more frequently in the text of the citing articles than citations of other authors. The extent of self‐citing did not appear to be related to the number of co‐authors and to the bibliography size of the citing articles, or to their authors' productivity.
Science is a continuum of experiences consisting of authors and their publications, and the authors’ experience is an integral part of their work that gets reflected through…
Abstract
Purpose
Science is a continuum of experiences consisting of authors and their publications, and the authors’ experience is an integral part of their work that gets reflected through self-citations. Thus, self-citations can be employed in measuring the relevance between publications and tracking the evolution of research. The paper aims to discuss this issue.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the bibliographic data obtained from Scopus, this study constructs and visualizes the self-citation networks of ten Nobel laureates 2018, in the fields of Physiology or Medicine, Physics, Chemistry and Economic Science, to demonstrate the evolving process of each laureate’s research across his or her scholarly career.
Findings
Statistics indicate that prominent scientists, such as Nobel laureates, have also frequently cited their own publications. However, their self-cited rates are quite low. Self-citations constitute an indispensable part of the citation system but contribute little to authors’ scientific impact, regardless of artificial self-citations. Self-citation networks present a trajectory that shows the evolving process of research across a scientist’s long-term scholarly career. There are obvious differences in self-citation patterns and network structures of different laureates without a disciplinary difference observed. The structures of self-citation networks are significantly influenced by laureates’ productivity. In addition, it is laureates’ own research patterns and citation habits that lead to the diversified patterns and structures of self-citation networks.
Research limitations/implications
Only scientific achievements presented in the form of publications are investigated and other kinds of scientific output, such as patents, are not included. Moreover, this approach is fit for scientists who have had a longer career and higher productivity.
Originality/value
This study proves the feasibility and effectiveness of self-citation analysis as a new way to examine research evolution.
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ALEXANDRA DIMITROFF and KENNING ARLITSCH
The purpose of this study was to determine the rate of self‐citation in the library and information science literature. A sample of 1,058 articles was examined. 50% of the…
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to determine the rate of self‐citation in the library and information science literature. A sample of 1,058 articles was examined. 50% of the articles examined contained at least one self‐citation. Articles that were reports of research, that were written by a faculty member, that addressed a theoretical topic, or that had multiple authors were all more likely to have to higher self‐citation rates. The self‐citation rate of 50% was higher than that reported in studies of self‐citation rates in the sciences and social sciences. However, the percentage of self‐citations as related to total citations of 6.6% falls between the percentage reported in the sciences and that reported in other social sciences.
The purpose of this conceptual paper is to present a simple, novel method for excluding self‐citation from h‐index values – the b‐index.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this conceptual paper is to present a simple, novel method for excluding self‐citation from h‐index values – the b‐index.
Design/methodology/approach
The work described assumes that relative self‐citation rate is constant across an author's publications and that the citation profile of a set of papers follows a Zipfian distribution, and from this derives a simple mathematical expression for excluding self‐citation from h‐index values.
Findings
It is shown that this new index is simply equal to the integer value of the author's external citation rate (non‐self‐citations) to the power three quarters, multiplied by their h‐index. This value, called the b‐index, does not require an extensive analysis of the self‐citation rates of individual papers to produce, and appropriately shows the biggest numerical decreases, as compared to the corresponding h‐index, for very high self‐citers.
Practical implications
The method presented allows the user to assess quickly and simply the effects of self‐citation on an author's h‐index.
Originality/value
This paper provides a simple and novel method for excluding self‐citation from the h‐index and should be of interest to those interested in bibliometrics and databases of scientific literature.
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Ramesh Pandita and Shivendra Singh
The present study aims to determine the prevailing trend of self-citations across 27 major subject disciplines at global level. The study also examines the aspects like percentage…
Abstract
Purpose
The present study aims to determine the prevailing trend of self-citations across 27 major subject disciplines at global level. The study also examines the aspects like percentage of self-citations in each individual subject discipline and the average number of self-citations per publication across different subject disciplines. The study also investigates self-citation percentage of research articles published from the 20 leading research countries of the world and across the continents.
Design/methodology/approach
The study is supported by empirical findings undertaken on secondary data retrieved from SCImago Journal and Country Ranking, which is entirely based on the SCOPUS data source (SCImago, 2014).
Findings
In all, 76,634,557 citations were received by as many as 14,946,975 research articles published from 2008-2012 at an average of 5.12 citations per article. Of the total citations received, 26,404,609 (34.45 per cent) were self-citations, which means that of the total citations received by each research article, 1.76 are self-citations. Compared to subject disciplines falling under social and humanistic sciences, pure and applied sciences have shown a greater trend of self-citation. On average, 4.18 self-citations were observed in each research article published in multidisciplinary subject disciplines. Of the total citations received by research articles published in the discipline of Psychology, 43.69 per cent are self-citations, the highest among all the subject disciplines under study. Of the total self-citations received by all the subject disciplines under study, 18.43 per cent were received alone in medicine, highest among all, whereas Social and Humanistic sciences received less than 1.00 per cent self-citations, the lowest among all the subject disciplines.
Originality/value
This study is original and first of its kind covering each individual subject discipline having global scope.
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Mu‐Hsuan Huang and Wen‐Yau Cathy Lin
The purpose of this research is to investigate the relationship between journal self‐citation and journal impact factor (JIF)/journal immediacy index (JII).
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this research is to investigate the relationship between journal self‐citation and journal impact factor (JIF)/journal immediacy index (JII).
Design/methodology/approach
This research examined research papers in 20 key journals in environmental engineering with a publication year range of 1999 to 2008. The bibliographical information of cited references was obtained from the Science Citation Index Expanded of the Web of Science.
Findings
The findings indicated that JIF and JII values changed only slightly regardless of the inclusion or exclusion of self‐citations, suggesting that the influence of self‐citation on journals was insignificant. Consequently there is no need for evaluations to exclude journal self‐citations in journal or researcher evaluations. In addition the findings indicated that JIF and five‐year JIF were highly correlated, suggesting that it would not be necessary to extend the calculation of JIF to five years. Considering the cost in terms of time and effort, the two‐year JIF is sufficient in the discipline of environmental engineering.
Originality/value
This research provides a better understanding of journal self‐citations in journal or researcher evaluation with JIF and JII as indicators.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of selected factors in journal citations. Various factors can affect citations distribution of journals. Among them, skewness…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of selected factors in journal citations. Various factors can affect citations distribution of journals. Among them, skewness of citations distribution, author self-citation, journal self-citation and recitations (RCs) have been studied.
Design/methodology/approach
The present study based on 16 systematically selected journals indexed in Scopus under the subject category “Library and Information Science.” The study was confined to original research and review articles that were published in the selected journals in the year 2011. The temporal citation window from 2011 to 2014 was taken for analysis. Tools like, Scopus author ID, ORCID and author profiles from Google Scholar were used to minimize the error due to homonyms, spelling variances and misspelling in authors’ names.
Findings
It is found that citations distribution in majority of the journals under the study is highly skewed and more likely to follow log-normal distribution. The nature of authorship in papers was found to have positive effect on citation counts. Self-citing data show that higher ranked journals have rather less direct impact on total citation counts than their lower counterpart. RCs are also found to be more in top-tier journals. Though the influence of self-citations and RCs were relatively less at individual level on total citations of journals but combined, they can play a dominant role and can affect total citation counts of journals at significant level.
Research limitations/implications
The present study is based on Scopus database only. Therefore, citation data can be affected by the inherent limitation of Scopus. Readers are encouraged to further the study by taking into account large sample and tracing citations from an array of citation indexes, such as Web of Science, Google citations, Indian Citation Index, etc.
Originality/value
This paper reinforces that the citations received by journals can be affected by the factors selected in this study. Therefore, the study provides better understanding of the role of these selected factors in journal citations.
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Charl de Villiers and John Dumay
– The purpose of this paper is to examine the construction of articles published in three highly ranked interdisciplinary accounting journals.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the construction of articles published in three highly ranked interdisciplinary accounting journals.
Design/methodology/approach
The analysis is based on articles published during 2010 in Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal (AAAJ), Accounting, Organizations and Society (AOS) and Critical Perspectives on Accounting (CPA). The authors develop a framework and examine characteristics of the published articles, including the prose.
Findings
Based on the construction of accounting academic articles in the highly ranked interdisciplinary journals, the authors introduce a simplified concept of the five distinct major parts of an article, make some taken-for-granted aspects of article construction explicit and conclude that alternatives, if used effectively, can add to the quality of an article. Finally, there is a discussion of, and a reflection on, how the taken-for-granted rules of academic publishing can be challenged.
Research limitations/implications
This article is limited by the authors ' own analysis and interpretations of AAAJ, AOS and CPA articles published during 2010.
Originality/value
As far as can be ascertained, the authors are the first to examine the construction of research articles published in high ranking interdisciplinary accounting journals. The paper can assist emerging scholars in the process of planning and writing their own articles. For seasoned researchers, the paper ' s insights may serve to reaffirm or help further develop their approach. The paper also contributes to the ongoing debate around the pressure to publish, the measurement of publications, and the difficulties of getting published.
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