“…However, it is easy for editors to manipulate the IF. Editors may artificially increase their journal's IF by (1) facilitating (or even demanding) self-citation [11,12,24,27,39,42,47,48,50,51], (2) increasing nonsource items with citations, (3) limiting the total number of articles and/or the number of original papers and increasing the number of review and/or technical articles that are more likely to be cited [11,27,35,42,47,51], (4) encouraging ''salami slicing'' [4,22,37], and (4) prerelease or timing of publication early during a year thus allowing more time for citation for a given year [19,28,49,51]. Excessive self-citation may cause a large shift in a journal's IF, particularly if the total rate of citations of that specific journal is low [11,32,51]; one journal's IF increased 18 ranks by one paper containing 303 self-citations [32].…”