Patterns of self-citation across disciplines (1980-1989)

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.

The prevalence of synchronous self-citation practices at the institutional level

“…Snyder and Bonzi (1998) reported it in the fields of Asian studies, Chemistry and Geology. Aksnes (2003) witnessed it in the publications by Norwegian authors.…”

“…Tolisano, Song and Cable (2015) observed that the last researcher in the author list of collaborative works are more frequent self-citers and are more likely than lead authors to cite themselves. There are also a few studies which could not either find any relation, or observe negative correlation, between these two variables (Glanzel and Thijs 2004;Huston 2006;Shah, Gul and Gaur 2015;Snyder and Bonzi 1998;Tagliacozzo 1977). In Plant Physiology and Neurobiology, Tagliacozzo (1977) argued that the extent of self-citation did not appear to be related to the number of co-authors, and interpreted that when there is disparity in seniority among co-authors, the senior author provides most of the references, like a single author would provide in his/her publication.…”

The Citation Analyses of Scientific Publications in the Field of Educational Sciences and Teacher Education in Turkey

“…Benzer bulgular birçok araştırmada da saptanmıştır (Karataş-Çetin ve Özer-Çaylan, 2015, Larivière, Sugimoto, ve Cronin, 2012Porter, 1980;Ramos-Rodriguez ve Ruiz-Navarro, 2004 Kendine atıf konusu uluslararası literatürde sıklıkla tartışılan konuların başında gelmektedir Al ve Soydal, 2012;Bonzi ve Snyder, 1991;Hyland, 2003;Schreiber, 2008;Snyder ve Bonzi, 1998). Bir alanın özel konularının (örneğin; Değerler Eğitimi Dergisi, Eğitimde Liderlik Dergisi gibi) yayımlandığı dergilerin kendine atıfların göreceli olarak alan veya genel konu dergilerine oranla daha yüksek çıkması olağan bir durumdur.…”

Authorship and Content Analysis of Engineering Education Research: A Case Study

“…The second reason for high citation counts could be self-citation. In multi-authored articles, self-citation occurs when at least one author is common between the citing and the cited articles [59]. Thus, the more the number of authors per article, the higher is the probability of getting self-citations [56].…”