IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/scient/v122y2020i2d10.1007_s11192-019-03334-2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Scientific impact of an author and role of self-citations

Author

Listed:
  • Tehmina Amjad

    (International Islamic University)

  • Yusra Rehmat

    (International Islamic University)

  • Ali Daud

    (International Islamic University
    University of Jeddah)

  • Rabeeh Ayaz Abbasi

    (Quaid-i-Azam University)

Abstract

In bibliometric and scientometric research, the quantitative assessment of scientific impact has boomed over the past few decades. Citations, being playing a major role in enhancing the impact of researchers, have become a very significant part of a plethora of new techniques for measuring scientific impact. Self-citations, though can be used genuinely to credit someone’s own work, can play a significant role in artificial manipulation of scientific impact. In this research, we study the impact of self-citations on enhancing the scientific impact of an author using a dataset retrieved from AMiner ranging from 1936 to 2014 from the computer science domain. We investigated the relations among trends of self-citation and their influence on scientific impact. We also studied its influence on ranking metrics including author impact factor and H-Index. By analyzing self-citations over time, we discover five basic self-citation trends, which are early, middle, later, multi and none. Distinctly different patterns were observed in self-citations trends. The results show that self-citations, if totally removed from total received citations, negatively influence the AIF and H-Index values and hence can be used to artificially boost the scientific impact. We used regression-based prediction models to predict the influence of self-citations on future H-Index. Classifiers including Logistic Regression, Naïve Bayes and K-NN were used with an accuracy of 93%, 73% and 60% respectively.

Suggested Citation

  • Tehmina Amjad & Yusra Rehmat & Ali Daud & Rabeeh Ayaz Abbasi, 2020. "Scientific impact of an author and role of self-citations," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 122(2), pages 915-932, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:122:y:2020:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-019-03334-2
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-019-03334-2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-019-03334-2
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11192-019-03334-2?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Emilio Ferrara & Alfonso E. Romero, 2013. "Scientific impact evaluation and the effect of self-citations: Mitigating the bias by discounting the h-index," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 64(11), pages 2332-2339, November.
    2. Dunaiski, Marcel & Geldenhuys, Jaco & Visser, Willem, 2018. "How to evaluate rankings of academic entities using test data," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 631-655.
    3. Dunaiski, Marcel & Geldenhuys, Jaco & Visser, Willem, 2018. "Author ranking evaluation at scale," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 679-702.
    4. Francisco González-Sala & Julia Osca-Lluch & Julia Haba-Osca, 2019. "Are journal and author self-citations a visibility strategy?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(3), pages 1345-1364, June.
    5. James H. Fowler & Dag W. Aksnes, 2007. "Does self-citation pay?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 72(3), pages 427-437, September.
    6. Chen, P. & Xie, H. & Maslov, S. & Redner, S., 2007. "Finding scientific gems with Google’s PageRank algorithm," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 8-15.
    7. Yi Bu & Ying Ding & Jian Xu & Xingkun Liang & Gege Gao & Yiming Zhao, 2018. "Understanding success through the diversity of collaborators and the milestone of career," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 69(1), pages 87-97, January.
    8. Dean Hendrix, 2009. "Institutional self-citation rates: A three year study of universities in the United States," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 81(2), pages 321-331, November.
    9. Fen Zhao & Yi Zhang & Jianguo Lu & Ofer Shai, 2019. "Measuring academic influence using heterogeneous author-citation networks," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 118(3), pages 1119-1140, March.
    10. Glänzel Wolfgang & Thijs Bart & Schlemmer Balázs, 2004. "A bibliometric approach to the role of author self-citations in scientific communication," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 59(1), pages 63-77, January.
    11. Wolfgang Glänzel & Bart Thijs, 2004. "Does co-authorship inflate the share of self-citations?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 61(3), pages 395-404, November.
    12. Ying Ding, 2011. "Topic-based PageRank on author cocitation networks," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(3), pages 449-466, March.
    13. Emilio Ferrara & Alfonso E. Romero, 2013. "Scientific impact evaluation and the effect of self‐citations: Mitigating the bias by discounting the h‐index," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 64(11), pages 2332-2339, November.
    14. Dag W. Aksnes, 2003. "A macro study of self-citation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 56(2), pages 235-246, February.
    15. Wolfgang Glänzel & Koenraad Debackere & Bart Thijs & András Schubert, 2006. "A concise review on the role of author self-citations in information science, bibliometrics and science policy," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 67(2), pages 263-277, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tehmina Amjad & Nafeesa Shahid & Ali Daud & Asma Khatoon, 2022. "Citation burst prediction in a bibliometric network," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(5), pages 2773-2790, May.
    2. Tehmina Amjad & Javeria Munir, 2021. "Investigating the impact of collaboration with authority authors: a case study of bibliographic data in field of philosophy," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(5), pages 4333-4353, May.
    3. Jialiang Lin & Yao Yu & Jiaxin Song & Xiaodong Shi, 2022. "Detecting and analyzing missing citations to published scientific entities," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(5), pages 2395-2412, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Martin Szomszor & David A. Pendlebury & Jonathan Adams, 2020. "How much is too much? The difference between research influence and self-citation excess," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(2), pages 1119-1147, May.
    2. Ibrahim Shehatta & Abdullah M. Al-Rubaish, 2019. "Impact of country self-citations on bibliometric indicators and ranking of most productive countries," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 120(2), pages 775-791, August.
    3. Hui Li & Weishu Liu, 2020. "Same same but different: self-citations identified through Scopus and Web of Science Core Collection," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(3), pages 2723-2732, September.
    4. Victoria Bakare & Grant Lewison, 2017. "Country over-citation ratios," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 113(2), pages 1199-1207, November.
    5. Zaggl, Michael A., 2017. "Manipulation of explicit reputation in innovation and knowledge exchange communities: The example of referencing in science," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(5), pages 970-983.
    6. Shubhanshu Mishra & Brent D Fegley & Jana Diesner & Vetle I Torvik, 2018. "Self-citation is the hallmark of productive authors, of any gender," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(9), pages 1-21, September.
    7. Tehmina Amjad & Ying Ding & Ali Daud & Jian Xu & Vincent Malic, 2015. "Topic-based heterogeneous rank," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 104(1), pages 313-334, July.
    8. Waltman, Ludo, 2016. "A review of the literature on citation impact indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 365-391.
    9. Rodrigo Costas & Thed N. Leeuwen & María Bordons, 2010. "Self-citations at the meso and individual levels: effects of different calculation methods," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 82(3), pages 517-537, March.
    10. Mansour Haghighat & Javad Hayatdavoudi, 2021. "How hot are hot papers? The issue of prolificacy and self-citation stacking," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(1), pages 565-578, January.
    11. James Hartley, 2012. "To cite or not to cite: author self-citations and the impact factor," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(2), pages 313-317, August.
    12. Anthony F. J. Raan, 2012. "Properties of journal impact in relation to bibliometric research group performance indicators," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(2), pages 457-469, August.
    13. Gordana Budimir & Sophia Rahimeh & Sameh Tamimi & Primož Južnič, 2021. "Comparison of self-citation patterns in WoS and Scopus databases based on national scientific production in Slovenia (1996–2020)," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(3), pages 2249-2267, March.
    14. Dean Hendrix, 2009. "Institutional self-citation rates: A three year study of universities in the United States," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 81(2), pages 321-331, November.
    15. Copiello, Sergio, 2019. "Peer and neighborhood effects: Citation analysis using a spatial autoregressive model and pseudo-spatial data," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 238-254.
    16. Michelle L. Dion & Sara McLaughlin Mitchell & Jane L. Sumner, 2020. "Gender, seniority, and self-citation practices in political science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(1), pages 1-28, October.
    17. Silvio Peroni & Paolo Ciancarini & Aldo Gangemi & Andrea Giovanni Nuzzolese & Francesco Poggi & Valentina Presutti, 2020. "The practice of self-citations: a longitudinal study," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(1), pages 253-282, April.
    18. Lina Zhou & Uchechukwuka Amadi & Dongsong Zhang, 2020. "Is Self-Citation Biased? An Investigation via the Lens of Citation Polarity, Density, and Location," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 22(1), pages 77-90, February.
    19. Dunaiski, Marcel & Geldenhuys, Jaco & Visser, Willem, 2019. "Globalised vs averaged: Bias and ranking performance on the author level," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 299-313.
    20. Dunaiski, Marcel & Geldenhuys, Jaco & Visser, Willem, 2018. "Author ranking evaluation at scale," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 679-702.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:122:y:2020:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-019-03334-2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.