Authors self-citation behaviour in the field of Library and Information Science
| Published date | 20 July 2015 |
| Pages | 458-468 |
| Date | 20 July 2015 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-10-2014-0134 |
| Author | Tariq Ahmad Shah,Sumeer Gul,Ramesh C Gaur |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval |
Authors self-citation behaviour
in the field of Library and
Information Science
Tariq Ahmad Shah and Sumeer Gul
Department of Library and Information Science, University of Kashmir,
Srinagar, India, and
Ramesh C. Gaur
Central Library, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to analyse the author self-citation behavior in the field of Library
and Information Science. Various factors governing the author self-citation behavior have also been studied.
Design/methodology/approach –The 2012 edition of Social Science Citation Index was consulted
for the selection of LIS journals. Under the subject heading “Information Science and Library Science”
there were 84 journals and out of these 12 journals were selected for the study based on systematic
sampling. The study was confined to original research and review articles that were published in select
journals in the year 2009. The main reason to choose 2009 was to get at least five years (2009-2013)
citation data from Web of Science Core Collection (excluding Book Citation Index) and SciELO Citation
Index. A citation was treated as self-citation whenever one of the authors of citing and cited paper
was common, i.e., the set of co-authors of the citing paper and that of the cited one are not disjoint.
To minimize the risk of homonyms, spelling variances and misspelling in authors’names, the authors
compared full author names in citing and cited articles.
Findings –A positive correlation between number of authors and total number of citations exists with
no correlation between number of authors and number/share of self-citations, i.e., self-citations are not
affected by the number of co-authors in a paper. Articles which are produced in collaboration attract
more self-citations than articles produced by only one author. There is no statistically significant
variation in citations counts (total and self-citations) in works that are result of different types of
collaboration. A strong and statistically significant positive correlation exists between total citation
count and frequency of self-citations. No relation could be ascertained between total citation count and
proportion of self-citations. Authors tend to cite more of their recent works than the work of other
authors. Total citation count and number of self-citations are positively correlated with the impact
factor of source publication and correlation coefficient for total citations is much higher than that for
self-citations. A negative correlation exhibits between impact factor and the share of self-citations.
Of particular note is that the correlation in all the cases is of weak nature.
Research limitations/implications –The research provides an understanding of the author
self-citations in the field of LIS. readers are encouraged to further the study by taking into account
large sample, tracing citations also from Book Citation Index (WoS) and comparing results with other
allied subjects so as to validate the robustness of the findings of this study.
Originality/value –Readers are encouraged to further the study by taking into account large sample,
tracing citations also from Book Citation Index (WoS) and comparing results with other allied subjects
so as to validate the robustness of the findings of this study.
Keywords Citations, Citation analysis, Author self-citations, Library and information Science,
Self-citations
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Self-citation refers to a situation where citing and cited works have an association
either at their author’s level or at the journal level. If there is non-disjoint set of authors
in citing and cited works, it is called author self-citation, and where both are published
Aslib Journal of Information
Management
Vol. 67 No. 4, 2015
pp. 458-468
©Emerald Group Publishing Limited
2050-3806
DOI 10.1108/AJIM-10-2014-0134
Received 5 October 2014
Revised 14 May 2015
Accepted 27 May 2015
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/2050-3806.htm
458
AJIM
67,4
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