Changing patterns of self-citation: cumulative inquiry or self-promotion?

Abstract

Self-citations are a familiar, if sometimes controversial, element of academic knowledge construction and reputation-building, contributing to both the cumulative nature of academic research and helping writers to promote their scientific authority and enhance their careers. As scholarly publications become more specialized, more collaborative and more important for promotion and tenure, we might expect self-citation to play a more visible role in published research and this paper explores this possibility. Here we trace patterns of self-citation in papers from the same five journals in four disciplines at three time periods over the past 50 years, selected according to their impact ranking in 2015. We identify a large increase in self-citations although this is subject to disciplinary variation and tempered by a huge rise in citations overall, so that self-citation has fallen as a proportion of all citations. We attempt to account for these changes and give a rhetorical explanation for authorial practices.

How much is too much? The difference between research influence and self-citation excess

“…The phenomenon of self-citation has long interested bibliometricians, sociologists of science, and scientists and scholars themselves (Kaplan 1965;Meadows and O'Connor 1971;Chubin and Moitra 1975;Narin 1976;Tagliacozzo 1977;Porter 1977;Garfield 1979;Lawani 1982;Peritz 1983;Brooks 1985Brooks , 1986Trimble 1986;Merton 1988;MacRoberts and MacRoberts 1989;Bonzi and Snyder 1991;Bott and Hargens 1991, for example). More recent studies include those of Glänzel and colleagues (Glänzel et al 2004Glänzel and Thijs 2004a, b;Schubert et al 2006;Thijs and Glänzel 2006;Glänzel 2008) and others (Aksnes 2003;Hyland 2003;Fowler and Aksnes 2007; van Raan 2008;Costas et al 2010;Leblond 2012;Lin and Huang 2012;Cooke and Donaldson 2014;Ioannidis 2015;Soares et al 2015;Galvez 2017;Hyland and Jiang 2018;Mishra et al 2018;Zhao and Strotmann 2018;Kacem et al 2019;Simoes and Crespo 2020). Waltman's review of citation impact indicators includes a summary of studies on self-citation (Waltman 2016).…”

“…In practice, self-citation seems rarely to be an activity located at one pole or the other-disinterestedness (Mertonian) or interestedness (social constructivist)-but generally to occupy some middle ground along a spectrum of motivations and meanings. White (2001) described most instances of self-citation as "egocentric without being egotistical" and others have explained or defended the legitimate desire to make one's work visible to other scientists and scholars, in addition to indicating its relevance (Kaplan 1965;Pichappan and Sarasvady 2002;Hyland 2003;Glänzel et al 2006;Glänzel 2008; van Raan 2008;Hyland and Jiang 2018;Mishra et al 2018; van Raan 2019).…”

“…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 data-even in the context of research evaluation, even for individuals, and thus contrary to traditional views-but accounting for them in some manner (Glänzel 2008;Costas et al 2010;Cooke and Donaldson 2014;Huang and Lin 2011;Schubert 2016;Galvez 2017;Hyland and Jiang 2018;Mishra et al 2018;Zhao and Strotmann 2018;Kacem et al 2019;Peroni et al 2019).…”

La autocita en artículos de investigación publicados en Scielo Chile: variación según el área de la ciencia y la experticia del autor

“…En cuanto a las implicaciones de este estudio, consideramos que los resultados podrían ayudar a comprender el comportamiento de los científicos de distintas áreas de la ciencia y con distintos grados de experticia en el ámbito de las publicaciones científicas con las características de nuestra muestra. De igual manera, esta investigación permite identificar hasta qué punto la estrategia de la autocitación permite continuar la línea temática de un investigador (Campanario y Candelario, 2010;Gálvez, 2017;Reiter, Mimouni y Mimouni, 2015) o, simplemente, se emplea por vanidad del autor (Hyland y Jiang, 2018). Desde nuestro punto de vista, en cualquier caso, las autocitas son estrategias de posicionamiento del autor, ya sea para mostrar sus trabajos previos, evidenciar su línea investigativa, aumentar sus índices como investigador, lograr visibilidad o simple vanidad.…”

Diachronic corpus analysis of stance markers in research articles: The field of applied linguistics

“…To the four agents of genre change detected by Swales, Guinda (2015, p. 76) added the tandem context/specialization. He argues that "hybridization is not possible without a favorable context, and sometimes it is the context itself that generates variation" If the genres are living and the RA is continually evolving, features constituting genres will also go through the same diachronic evolution process to meet the changing and evolving needs and expectations of the host discourse communities (see, for example, Ayers, 2008;Banks, 2008;Biber & Gray, 2011;Gillaerts, 2013;Hyland & Jiang, 2018b;Jiang & Wang, 2018). Amongst features constituting genres, metadiscourse resources have also gone through the same diachronic evolution process to fulfill new social and epistemological demands of discourse communities (e.g., Gillaerts & Van de Velde, 2010;Kuhi & Dustsadigh, 2012;Gillaerts, 2014;Kuhi & Mousavi, 2015;Hyland & Jiang, 2016a, 2016b, 2018a.…”