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Country over-citation ratios

Author

Listed:
  • Victoria Bakare

    (King’s College London)

  • Grant Lewison

    (King’s College London)

Abstract

There is a clear tendency for authors of scientific papers to over-cite the papers by their fellow countrymen (and countrywomen) relative to the percentage presence of their papers in world output in the same field. We investigated the Over-Citation Ratio (OCR) as a function of this percentage, and the effects of different scientific fields and publication years. For cancer research, we also compared clinical with basic research. We found that the OCR for a given percentage presence has been decreasing over the period 1980–2010, probably because of better communications. It is greater for fields of relatively more national interest (chemistry, ornithology) and less for those of international concern (astronomy, diabetes, cancer). It may also be slightly greater for basic cancer research than for clinical work. The OCR values given allow other types of citation, such as the references on clinical practice guidelines and papers featured in newspaper stories, to be put in context: are they unusually nationalistic, or typical of normal citation behaviour?

Suggested Citation

  • Victoria Bakare & Grant Lewison, 2017. "Country over-citation ratios," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 113(2), pages 1199-1207, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:113:y:2017:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-017-2490-z
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-017-2490-z
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    5. Grant Lewison & Guillermo Paraje, 2004. "The classification of biomedical journals by research level," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 60(2), pages 145-157, June.
    6. 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.
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    8. Antonia Andrade & Raúl González-Jonte & Juan Miguel Campanario, 2009. "Journals that increase their impact factor at least fourfold in a few years: The role of journal self-citations," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 80(2), pages 515-528, August.
    9. 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.
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    Cited by:

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    3. Ying Zhang & Cornelia Lawson & Liangping Ding, 2023. "Can scientists remain internationally visible after the return to their home country? A study of Chinese scientists," MIOIR Working Paper Series 2023-01, The Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (MIoIR), The University of Manchester.
    4. Mahdi Khelfaoui & Julien Larrègue & Vincent Larivière & Yves Gingras, 2020. "Measuring national self-referencing patterns of major science producers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(2), pages 979-996, May.
    5. Sultana, Atia & Lewison, Grant & Pallari, Elena, 2019. "The evaluation of mental disorders research reported in British and Irish newspapers between 2002 and 2013, and a comparison with the relative disease burdens and with research outputs in the two coun," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 123(4), pages 419-426.
    6. 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.
    7. Bornmann, Lutz & Adams, Jonathan & Leydesdorff, Loet, 2018. "The negative effects of citing with a national orientation in terms of recognition: National and international citations in natural-sciences papers from Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 931-949.

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