Abstract
This study is aimed at analysing self-citation as a strategy used by journals and authors regarding first citations in of Latin-American psychology journals between 2012 and 2016. A total of 8977 citations received were analysed for a total of 2403 papers published in the 19 Latin-American psychology journals collected in the 2016 WoS (included in the 2015 JCR edition). The results indicate that there is an effect of the first self-citations on the number of citations, the journal self-citations and the author’s. It is observed that the journal self-citations and first journal self-citations are more important for the journals located in first quartiles, versus author’s self-citations. The importance of the type of self-citation differs between some publications and others, being the journal self-citations those that greater differences present between journals throughout the period studied. The self-consumption of information, according to the number of articles with self-citations, varies between the journals, ranging between 88.8 and 55.8%. It can be concluded that self-citations and first self-citations play an important role in the citation of the works and in the increase of their visibility.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Andrade, A., González-Jonte, R., & Campanario, J. M. (2009). Journals that increase their impact factor at least fourfold in a few years: The role of journal self-citations. Scientometrics, 80, 515–528. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-008-2085-9.
Bordons, M., Fernández, M. T., & Gómez, I. (2002). Advantages and limitations in the use of impact factor measures for the assessment of research performance in a peripheral country. Scientometrics, 52, 195–206. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1014800407876.
Bray, J. H., & Maxwell, S. E. (1982). Analyzing and interpreting significant MANOVAs. Review of Educational Research, 52, 340–367. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543052003340.
Buela-Casal, G. (2003). Evaluación de la calidad de los artículos y de las revistas científicas: propuesta del factor de impacto ponderado y de un índice de calidad. Psicothema, 15, 23–35.
Buela-Casal, G., Quevedo, R., & Guillén, A. (2015). Ranking 2013 de investigación de las universidades públicas españolas. Psicothema, 27, 317–326.
Campanario, J. M., & Candelario, A. (2010). La influencia de las autocitas en el aumento del factor de impacto en revistas de Ciencias Sociales. Revista Española de Documentación Científica, 33, 185–200. https://doi.org/10.3989/redc.2010.2.722.
Campanario, J. M., & Molina, A. (2009). Surviving bad times: The role of citations, selfcitations and numbers of citable items in recovery of the journal impact factor after at least four years of continuous decreases. Scientometrics, 81, 859–864. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-008-2257-7.
Chorus, C., & Waltman, L. (2016). A large-scale analysis of impact factor biased journal self-citations. PLoS ONE, 11(8), e0161021. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0161021.
Cohen, J. (1992). A power primer. Psychological Bulletin, 112, 155–159.
Fowler, J. H., & Aksnes, D. W. (2007). Does self-citation pay? Scientometrics, 72, 427–437. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-007-1777-2.
Glänzel, W., & Moed, H. F. (2002). Journal impact measures in bibliometric research. Scientometrics, 53, 171–193. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1014848323806.
Glänzel, W., Thijs, B., & Schlemmer, B. (2004). A bibliometric approach to the role of author self-citations in scientific communication. Scientometrics, 59, 63–77. https://doi.org/10.1023/B:SCIE.0000013299.38210.74.
González-Sala, F., & Osca-Lluch, J. (2017). Estudio de la relación entre miembros del comité editorial de las revistas científicas de psicología y su producción científica según diferentes indicadores bibliométricos. Revista Española de Documentación Científica, 40(2), e168. https://doi.org/10.3989/redc.2017.2.1392.
González-Sala, F., Osca-Lluch, J., Tortosa, F., & Peñaranda, M. (2017). Beneficios de las relaciones entre los miembros de los comités editoriales y las revistas científicas. El caso de las revistas iberoamericanas de psicología. Revista Española de Documentación Científica, 40(4), e189. https://doi.org/10.3989/redc.2017.4.1460.
Heneberg, P. (2016). From excessive journal self-cites to citation stacking: Analysis of journal self-citation kinetics in search journals, which boost their scientometric indicators. PLoS ONE. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0153730.
Hicks, D., Wouters, P., Waltman, L., De Rijcke, S., & Rafols, I. (2015). The Leiden Manifesto for research metrics. Nature, 520, 429–431. https://doi.org/10.1038/520429a.
Holub, H. W., Tappeiner, G., & Eberharter, V. (1991). The iron law of important articles. Southern Economic Journal, 58, 317–328. https://doi.org/10.2307/1060176.
Jiménez-Contreras, E., Robinson-García, N., & Cabezas-Clavijo, A. (2011). Productividad e impacto de los investigadores españoles: umbrales de referencia por áreas científicas. Revista Española de Documentación Científica, 34, 505–525. https://doi.org/10.3989/redc.2011.4.828.
Jiménez-Contreras, E., Torres Salinas, D., Ruiz Pérez, R., & Delgado López-Cozar, E. (2010). Investigación de excelencia en España: ¿protagonistas o papeles secundarios? Medicina Clínica, 134, 76–81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.medcli.2009.06.037.
Massisimo, A., & de Boado, Sánchez. (2004). Evaluación de colecciones en las bibliotecas universitarias (II): métodos basados en el uso de la colección. Anales de Documentación, 7, 171–183.
McVeigh, M. E. (2002). Journal self-citation in the Journal citation reports. http://www.thomsonreuters.com/products_services/science/free/essays/journal_self_citation_jcr/. Accessed February 11 2018.
Mu-Hsuan, H., & Wen-Yau, C. L. (2011). Probing the effect of autor self-citations on h index: a case study of enviromental engineering. Journal of Information Science, 37, 453–461. https://doi.org/10.1177/0165551511412027.
Ortiz de Urbina, M., & Mora, E. (2013). El sistema de acreditación del profesorado a través del Programa ACADEMIA: Evolución y cambios. Revista Española de Documentación Científica, 36, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.3989/redc.2013.1.971.
Pandita, R., & Sing, S. (2017). Self-citations, a trend prevalent across subject disciplines at the global level: An overview. Collection Building, 36, 115–126. https://doi.org/10.1108/CB-03-2017-0008.
Pérez, A. (2001). El desarrollo de colecciones: evaluación en las bibliotecas universitarias españolas. Tesis para optar el grado de Doctor, Departamento de Biblioteconomía y Documentación, Universidad de Granada, España.
Pérez, A. (2002). La evaluación de colecciones: Métodos y modelos. Documentación de las Ciencias de la Información, 25, 32–60.
Quindós, G. (2009). Confundiendo al confuso: reflexiones sobre el factor de impacto, el índice h(irsch), el valor Q y otros cofactores que influyen en la felicidad del investigador. Revista Iberoamericana de Micología, 26, 97–102. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1130-1406(09)70018-X.
Reverter Masià, J. (2012). Publicaciones científicas y evaluación de la vida profesional de un científico. Nutrición Hospitalaria, 27, 1368–1369. https://doi.org/10.3305/nh.2012.27.4.5780.
Shibayama, S., & Baba, Y. (2015). Impact-oriented science policies and scientific publication practices: The case of life sciences in Japan. Research Policy, 44, 936–950. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2015.01.012.
Tabachnick, B. G., & Fidell, L. S. (2007). Using multivariate statistics (5ª ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Torres-Salinas, D., Delgado-López-Cózar, E., García-Moreno-Torres, J., & Herrera, F. (2011). Rankings ISI de las universidades españolas según campos científicos: descripción y resultados. El Profesional de la Información, 20, 111–122. https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2011.ene.14.
Van Leeuwen, T., Visser, M. S., Henk, F., Moed, H. F., Nederhof, J., & Van Raan, A. F. (2003). The Holy Grail of science policy: Exploring and combining bibliometric tools in search of scientific excellence. Scientometrics, 57, 257–280. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1024141819302.
Van Noorden, R. (2012). Record number of journals banned for boosting impact factor with self-citations. http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/06/record-number-of-journals-banned-for-boosting-impact-factor-with-self-citations.html. Accessed February 29 2018.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
González-Sala, F., Osca-Lluch, J. & Haba-Osca, J. Are journal and author self-citations a visibility strategy?. Scientometrics 119, 1345–1364 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-019-03101-3
Received:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-019-03101-3