The Relation between Self-Citation and Impact Factor in Medical Science Open Access Journals in ISI & DOAJ Databases

Citation is one of the important elements in scientific literature which has a significant role in information production and generation. Self-citation is a part of citation behavior. Relying on their articles, journals can change the number of citations and consequently the level of journal impact factor. This research aims at investigating the relation between self-citation and impact factor in the open access journals indexed in ISI and DOAJ in medical science in 2007-08. In this research, indexes such as the relation between self-citation of journal and impact factor and the effect of self-citation rate of the journal in open access performance are investigated. Research method is an analytical method conducted by using citation analysis technique. SPSS statistical software was used to examine and analyze the data and its inferential analysis methods such as Pierson Factor were used as well. Statistical society includes 168 journals. The results showed a self-citation rate of 28% for the journal. The findings indicate that there is a significant relation between self-citation and impact factor. After omitting self-citation, the level of self-citation in the performance of journals showed that 60% of the titles in the medical science experienced ranking increase, 27% experienced ranking decrease and 13% remained unchanged. Torabian R, Heidari A, Shahrifar M, Khodadi E, Esmaeile Vardanjani SA. The Relation between Self-Citation and Impact Factor in Medical Science Open Access Journals in ISI & DOAJ Databases. Life Sci J 2012;9(4):2206-2209] (ISSN: 1097-8135). http://www.lifesciencesite.com. 32

Modified CiteScore metric for reducing the effect of self-citations

Elsevier B.V. launched a scholarly metric called CiteScore (CS) on December 8, 2016. Up till then, the journal impact factor (JIF) owned by Clarivate Analytics (Thomson Reuters) was the only trusted metric for journal evaluation. As noted by Teixeira da Silva & Memon (2017), CS offers some observed advantages over JIF. The potentials of CiteScore as a viable metric are still emerging. The paper briefly introduces a variant of the CiteScore that can be used in quantifying the impact of researchers and their institutions. The ultimate aim is to reduce the numerical effect of self-citations (SC) in academic publishing. The reduction is designed to discourage SC but not diminishing it. The reasons for the adopted methodology are discussed extensively. The proposed modified CiteScore metric is simple, transparent and constructed to ensure integrity in academic publication. The result showed that the proposed modified CiteScore is a better option than the traditional CiteScore and hence, can be applied in impact determination, the ranking of authors and their institutions, and evaluation of scientists for a grant award. The approach used in this paper is entirely new in two ways; first, a metric similar to journal ranking is proposed for ranking authors and their institutions and secondly, disproportionate scores are awarded to different sources of citations to reduce perceived dishonesty in academic publications. In conclusion, this research is one of very few to report the effect of SC on CiteScore. Hitherto, the effect of SC has always been on the journal impact factor (IF)

Самоцитирование и его влияние на оценку научной деятельности: обзор литературы. Часть II

This review summarizes papers which analyze the impact of self-citation on research evaluation. We introduce a generalized definition of self-citation and its variants: author, institutional, country, journal, discipline, and publisher selfcitation. Formulae of the basic self-citation measures are given, namely self-citing and self-cited rates. World literature on author, institutional, country, and journal self-citation is studied in more detail. Current views on the role and impact of self-citation are compiled and analyzed. It is found that there is a general consensus on some points: a) excessive self-citation and its total absence are both seen as pathological; b) self-citation has low impact on large research entities but may be critical for the analysis of individual researchers; c) share of self-citations is generally higher for entities with poor bibliometric performance, while top scientists, institutions, journals receive the majority of their citations from outside. This review also considers how bibliometric tools and databases respond to the challenge of possible manipulation by self-citations and how some bibliometric indicators are adjusted by them. The first part of the review presented here deals with the fundamental terms and definitions, and the most discussed and studied type of the self-citation, author self-citation.This second and final part of the review considers institutional, country and journal self-citation. It also examines new bibliometric indicators which adjust for self-citation.Представлен обзор литературы, посвящённой влиянию самоцитирования и возникающим от этого возможным искажениям при библиометрическом анализе. Вводится обобщённое определение самоцитирования и его частных вариантов: авторского, институционального, странового, журнального, дисциплинарного, издательского. Приведены формулы основных метрик самоцитирования – коэффициентов самоцитирования и самоцитируемости. Подробно рассмотрена мировая литература по авторскому, институциональному, страновому и журнальному самоцитированию. Обобщены текущие взгляды на роль и влияние самоцитирования при оценке научной деятельности. При аналитическом рассмотрении статей, посвящённых самоцитированию, выясняется, что у исследователей существует консенсус по ряду позиций, например: а) патологией является как гипертрофированное самоцитирование, так и его отсутствие; б) самоцитирование мало влияет на оценку крупных научных единиц, но может быть критическим при анализе отдельных учёных; в) влияние самоцитирования наиболее выражено у научных единиц со слабыми библиометрическими показателями, в то время как топовые учёные, организации, журналы и др. получают наибольшее число ссылок извне. Рассмотрено реагирование самих библиометрических инструментов и баз данных с целью корректировки индикаторов в случае манипулирования самоцитированием.Вторая, заключительная часть обзора посвящена институциональному, страновому и журнальному самоцитированию, а также введению новых библиометрических индикаторов, так или иначе учитывающих наличие самоцитирования

Statistical modelling of citation exchange among statistics journals

Scholarly journal rankings based on citation data are often met with skepticism by the scientific community. Part of the skepticism is due to the discrepancy between the common perception of journals' prestige and their ranking based on citation counts. A more serious concern is the inappropriate use of journal rankings to evaluate the scientific influence of authors. This paper focuses on analysis of the table of cross-citations among a selection of Statistics journals. Data are collected from the Web of Science database published by Thomson Reuters. Our results suggest that modelling the exchange of citations between journals is useful to highlight the most prestigious journals, but also that journal citation data are characterized by considerable heterogeneity, which needs to be properly summarized. Inferential conclusions require care in order to avoid potential over-interpretation of insignificant differences between journal ratings

Team size matters : collaboration and scientific impact since 1900

This paper provides the first historical analysis of the relationship between collaboration and scientific impact, using three indicators of collaboration (number of authors, number of addresses, and number of countries) and including articles published between 1900 and 2011. The results demonstrate that an increase in the number of authors leads to an increase in impact–-from the beginning of the last century onwards—and that this is not simply due to self-citations. A similar trend is also observed for the number of addresses and number of countries represented in the byline of an article. However, the constant inflation of collaboration since 1900 has resulted in diminishing citation returns: larger and more diverse (in terms of institutional and country affiliation) teams are necessary to realize higher impact. The paper concludes with a discussion of the potential causes of the impact gain in citations of collaborative papers

The integration of open access journals in the scholarly communication system: three science fields

The greatest number of open access journals (OAJs) is found in the sciences and their influence is growing. However, there are only a few studies on the acceptance and thereby integration of these OAJs in the scholarly communication system. Even fewer studies provide insight into the differences across disciplines. This study is an analysis of the citing behaviour in journals within three science fields: biology, mathematics, and pharmacy and pharmacology. It is a statistical analysis of OAJs as well as non-OAJs including both the citing and cited side of the journal to journal citations. The multivariate linear regression reveals many similarities in citing behaviour across fields and media. But it also points to great differences in the integration of OAJs. The integration of OAJs in the scholarly communication system varies considerably across fields. The implications for bibliometric research are discussed

Self-citations at the meso and individual levels: effects of different calculation methods

This paper focuses on the study of self-citations at the meso and micro (individual) levels, on the basis of an analysis of the production (1994–2004) of individual researchers working at the Spanish CSIC in the areas of Biology and Biomedicine and Material Sciences. Two different types of self-citations are described: author self-citations (citations received from the author him/herself) and co-author self-citations (citations received from the researchers’ co-authors but without his/her participation). Self-citations do not play a decisive role in the high citation scores of documents either at the individual or at the meso level, which are mainly due to external citations. At micro-level, the percentage of self-citations does not change by professional rank or age, but differences in the relative weight of author and co-author self-citations have been found. The percentage of co-author self-citations tends to decrease with age and professional rank while the percentage of author self-citations shows the opposite trend. Suppressing author self-citations from citation counts to prevent overblown self-citation practices may result in a higher reduction of citation numbers of old scientists and, particularly, of those in the highest categories. Author and co-author self-citations provide valuable information on the scientific communication process, but external citations are the most relevant for evaluative purposes. As a final recommendation, studies considering self-citations at the individual level should make clear whether author or total self-citations are used as these can affect researchers differently