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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
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

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    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.

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