Author self-citation in medical literature

• Published in: Canadian Medical Association journal (CMAJ) Vol. 170; no. 13; pp. 1929 - 1930
• Main Author: Kovacic, N.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ottawa CMA Impact, Inc 22.06.2004; Canadian Medical Association
• Subjects: Bibliometrics; Diabetes; Evaluation; Medical literature
• ISSN: 0820-3946; 1488-2329
• DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.1040513

Both journal self-citation (when articles in a journal cite previous articles in the same journal) and author self-citation may influence the journal's impact factor.5 From the e-table presented by Garni and colleagues1 it is clear that author self-citations accounted for a negligible proportion of citations in the high-impact journals and, therefore, would not substantially distort the impact factor of those journals. From the same data, one can also presume that there is an inverse correlation between the proportion of author self-citations and the impact factor of a journal. Our analysis of citations of the Croatian Medical Journal indicated that an increase in the absolute number of citations was indeed followed by a decrease in the proportion of both author and journal self-citations.6 The decrease in author self-citations could have been due to widening of the author pool (a result of better international visibility of the journal) or to increased quality of articles (which would attract independent citations), or it may simply have been mathematical, self-citations having been "diluted" by the higher number of independent citations. The decrease in the proportion of journal self-citations probably reflected the journal's increased visibility.6 Although a high proportion of journal self-citations may indeed increase the impact factor of a journal, in small journals this increase is illusory: it does not reflect an increase in international visibility, since the flow of information is limited mostly to the pool of the journal's authors and readers.