There is a continuous range from just above zero self-citation to around 9% self-citing and 22% self-referencing. This odd result is driven by frequent group authorship of highly cited papers. Citations, Citation Indicators, and Research Quality: An Overview of Learned Publishing,22(1), 511. There are 4 Frontiers journals in the top 10% in at least one category, and 23 journals are in the top 25%. Ferrara, E., & Romero, A. E. (2013). PLoS ONE, 14(9): article number e0221212. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 2019; Peroni et al. Reasons for self-citation include: the cumulative nature of individual research, the need for personal gratification, or the value of self-citation as a rhetorical and tactical tool in the struggle for visibility and scientific authority (Fowler and Aksnes 2007). The Scopus web site claims this database is the "largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and quality web sources with smart tools to track, analyze and visualize research." Quantifying the Impact of My Publications: Citations Macfarlane, B., & Cheng, M. (2008). Such considerations stem from the Mertonian notion of a citation as a repayment of an intellectual debt, which in turn provides reward in the form of community recognition to those so credited (Small 2004). Malaysian Journal of Library & Information Science,23(2), 2546. Gender variations in citation distribution in medicine are very small and due to self-citation and journal prestige. Biagioli, M., Kenney, M., Martin, B. R., & Walsh, J. P. (2019). Scientometrics,87(1), 8598. It Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database A = citations in published articles in 2020 and 2021 by indexed journals during 2022. The battle to define the meaning of a citation. PLoS ONE, 11(8), article number e0161021. Each graph includes Q1, Median, Q3 and the lower and upper thresholds (set at 1.5 and 3 times the inter-quartile range, IQR) for indicative outliers. From excessive journal self-cites to citation stacking: Analysis of journal self-citation kinetics in search for journals, which boost their scientometric indicators. Lawani, S. M. (1982). Any person attempting to do this would have to publish very frequently to make any difference. This means that other publications such as letters, editorials, perspectives, and opinions were not included in our search criteria which leaves a large number of publications out of the study. Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic Hospital, Rochester, Minnesota, United States of America, Contributed equally to this work with: MATH Baselines are calculated using a whole counting method, this means that all papers in a subject area are counted towards the baseline calculation regardless of whether those papers are also in other subject areas or not. [16] interpreted as representing the central tendency of the distribution. (2012). (1986). The median home value across these five cities, on average, is about $137,900. Finally, the model was adjusted to account for the discrepancy in volume between non-Covid-19 papers and Covid-19 papers. This certainly cautions against any simple test of inappropriate behaviour and confirms the need for informed scrutiny and interpretation. A threshold for indicative outliers was then introduced to the graphical analysis. The h-index and self-citations. Appendix (Figs. The 10-year average for Nature,497(7451), 557560. No clear reference thresholds and no firm consensus on the management of self-citation data has emerged but opinion now appears to favor leaving self-citations in the dataeven in the context of research evaluation, even for individuals, and thus contrary to traditional viewsbut accounting for them in some manner (Glnzel 2008; Costas et al. Correspondence to All articles published within the 24-month time frame were selected to produce an average citation rate for the journal itself over that period. Average citation rate for publications in a number research fields. This would mean that the article is being cited an average of 50% more times per year than expected for articles within its co-citation network published in the same year. The following excerpt from a Citation Rates table reveals that on average, a paper from a Geosciences research field published in 2008 received 9.55 citations, and a paper from an Immunology research field published in 2008 received 20.42 citations. Rousseau, R. (1999). Lin, W. Y. C., & Huang, M. H. (2012). The self-citation rate to highly cited papers is relatively consistent and mostly within a central range up to 10% self-citations. Hicks, D. (2012). The length of time surveyed certainly affects any reading since self-citations tend to be given earlier by an author than by peers: over time an authors self-citation rate tends to decline (Tagliacozzo 1977; Aksnes 2003; Glnzel et al. The method to calculate the impact factor of The Social Science Journal is as follows. 2019; Peroni et al. [8][9] Similarly, review papers are more often cited than regular research papers because they summarize results from many papers. PLoS ONE, 11(4), article number e0153730. Average Evidence-based Reading and Writing score: 529Average Math score: 521. Citation impact is a measure of how many times an academic journal article or book or author is cited by other articles, books or authors. Brooks, T. A. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03417-5, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03417-5. Averages are calculated by adding the citation counts of individual papers and dividing by the number of papers. In doing this, we demonstrate the sharp contrast between citation rates for Covid-19 and non-Covid-19 articles published in 24 months during the rise and height of the global pandemic. More recent studies include those of Glnzel and colleagues (Glnzel et al. Citation impact - Wikipedia . Fields that lie outside the main distribution (Pharmacology, Mathematics and Space Science) have been labelled. Following the 2021 release of the Web of Science Group's Journal Citation Report (JCR 2021) and Scopus' CiteScore, 46 of the journals published by Frontiers have a Journal Impact Factor and 57 journals have a CiteScore. The self-cited rate of scientific journals and the manipulation of their impact factors. The number of times Covid-19 publications are being cited throughout the literature appears remarkably high but has not been directly compared to non-Covid-19 papers in the same journals over an extended period. Measurement in the Swedish Research Council's bibliometric system 2009, open citation window, self--citations included. In the past, as here, attention has been given to self-citation in isolation but in fact the co-authors also benefit. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-019-03243-4. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology,52(2), 87108. https://doi.org/10.22452/mjlis.vol22no1.1. (2004). Data are plotted both as a linear and as a log-normal plot. Communism, universalism and disinterestedness: Re-examining contemporary support among academics for Mertons scientific norms. We found that there a significant correlation between the values for individual researchers. PLoS Biology, 17(8), article number e3000384. Is the researcher a senior investigator with a long record of publication? https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-008-2160-2. Citation frequency is highly skewed with many infrequently cited papers and relatively few highly cited papers. 2006; Glnzel 2008; van Raan 2008; Hyland and Jiang 2018; Mishra et al. We describe both a generic level of median self-referencing rates, common to most fields, and a graphical, distribution-driven assessment of excessive self-citation that demarcates a threshold not dependent on statistical tests or percentiles (since for some fields all values are within a central normal range). For example, a global set might consist of all articles in the field of chemistry publishedin 2006. Core elements in the process of citing publications: Conceptual overview of the literature. The log plot is of benefit because it is a more appropriate presentation of the data for a negative binomial distribution. Global citation inequality is on the rise | PNAS Scientometrics,113(2), 11991207. The negative effects of citing with a national orientation in terms of recognition: National and international citations in natural-sciences papers from Germany, the Netherlands, and UK. Journal of the American Society for Information Science,37(1), 3436. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.5090140304. Gaming the metrics: Misconduct and manipulation in academic research. Linear plots by Essential Science Indicators field of the pattern of self-referencing to earlier papers by Highly Cited Researchers identified by analysing Web of Science data for 20082018 and to (self-citing from later publications) highly cited papers on which a researcher is also an author or co-author. Scarpa and Baccini and colleagues have reported that the Italian national research assessment exercise (VQR, Research Quality Evaluation), initiated at the beginning of the past decade, provoked strategic behavior among researchers, especially those early in their careers, that resulted in significantly higher rates of self-citation than previously seen (Scarpa et al. [but] it is quite difficult to use self-citation to inflate a citation count without being rather obvious about it. Kacem et al. [34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41] Some experimental and observational studies have found that articles published in OA journals do not receive more citations, on average, than those published in subscription journals;[42][43] other studies have found that they do. While our research reveals the substantial degree to which Covid-19 articles are being cited in top journals relative to non-Covid-19 articles, the effect on journals themselves remains to be seen. Scientometrics, 67(3), 503514. Young, J. S., & Brandes, P. M. (2020). Shehatta, I., & Al-Rubaish, A. M. (2019). Journal of Psychosomatic Research,78(1), 711. The threshold number of highly cited papers that determines selection differs by field, with Clinical Medicine requiring the most and Agricultural Sciences, Economics & Business, and Pharmacology & Toxicology typically among the fewest. (2006). https://doi.org/10.1177/030631277500500106. American Sociologist,22(2), 147158. For example, if the value of the 1.00% percentile is 15, a paper in the same research field in the same year must receive at least 15 citations to belong to that percentile. Select the "Cited by" link and selecting the "Search within articles citingXYZ work" checkbox to discover the impact of a work. Self-citation by researchers: Narcissism or an inevitable outcome of a cohesive and sustained research program? Evidence of complex citer motivations. discover how a known idea or innovation has been confirmed, applied, improved, extended, or corrected.. Journal of the American Society for Information Science,33(5), 281284. In this way, three separate citation averages were gathered for each journal: 1) all articles 2) non-Covid-19 articles 3) only Covid-19 articles. It is important to recognize that citation counts grow over time. Coercive citation in academic publishing. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2018.07.009. Some characteristics of citing works that can be used for narrative purposes include: The inherent assumption is that significant publications will demonstrate a high citation count. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2913-5. 4) show a superficially similar pattern to those for self-referencing, with a relatively consistent series of median values up to around 6% self-citations. Unsurprisingly, several seminal Covid-19 publications have been cited at incredibly high rates as researchers have turned to these papers to help guide their next steps [68]. In response, the scientific field has dedicated enormous amounts of resources to researching the virus and its effects. The concept of self-citation (self-referencing or self-citation) can also be defined narrowly or broadly, that is, including or not including coauthors (Snyder and Bonzi 1998; Aksnes 2003; Glnzel et al. 2019); and, 5%, using author self-citation (Kacem et al. reported that on average, delayed OAJs had citation rates twice as high as TAJs, and 3 times as high as immediate OAJs [9]. Merton, R. K. (1995). The citation rate for all years is the total number of citations received by all papers in all fields published during the 10-year period divided by the total number of papers. The correlation between the rates of self-citation to and from the highly cited papers of each researcher was calculated and was highly significant within every field. Measuring science: Basic principles and application of advanced bibliometrics. 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average citation rates by field 2020