The prevalence of synchronous self-citation practices at the institutional level

Abstract

Self-citation behaviour of authors affiliated to an institution was studied through synchronous self-citation analysis. From 2004 through 2015, Web of Science and SciVerse Scopus databases indexed a total of 1503 articles by authors affiliated to a university in India. Self-citations were prevalent in 62.23 percent of works and significant difference is observed in self-citation pattern with regard to co-authorship, size of reference list, authors’ productivity, citation age, citation over time, and reputation of source publications. Statistically positive correlation is observed between number of co-authors and number of self-citations (p<.01). Inter-institutional collaborative works attract more self-citations than works of intra-institutional efforts (p<.01). Significant positive correlation exists between authors’ productivity and share of self-citations (p<.01). Regarding the currency of self-citations, authors tend to cite more of their recent works than the works of others. Articles published in Journal Citation Reports (JCR) indexed sources have more number of self-citations than articles published in JCR excluded sources (p<.01).