No abstract

The paper examines patterns of self-citation in six disciplines distributed equally among the physical and social sciences and the humanities. Sample articles were examined to determine the relative numbers and ages of self-citations and citations to others in the bibliographies and to the exposure given to each type of citation in the text of the articles. Significant differences in the number and age of citations between disciplines were found. Over all, 9% of all citations were self-citations; 15% of physical science citations were self-citations, as opposed to 6% in the social sciences and 3% in the humanities. Within disciplines, there was no significantly different amount of coverage between self-citations and citations to others. Over all, it appears that a lack of substantive differences in self-citation behavior is consistent across disciplines. The number of words devoted to self-citations vary among disciplines, but remain constant within a discipline for both self-citations and citations to others.

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation.

No abstract

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation.The paper investigates the problems of using commercial search engines for web-link research and attempts to clarify the nature of the problems involved in the use of these engines. The research finds that search engines are highly variable in the results they produce, are limited in the search functions they offer, have poorly and/or incorrectly documented functions, use search logics that are opaque, and change the search functions they offer over time. The limitations which are inherent in commercial search engines should cause researchers to have reservations about any conclusions that rely on these tools as primary data-gathering instruments. The shortcomings are market-driven rather than inherent properties of the web or of web-searching technologies. Improved functionalities are within the technical capabilities of search engine programmers and could be made available to the research community. The findings also offer mild support for the validity of the connection between web links and citations as analogues of intellectual linkage. 375 375