Is excessive self-citation actually self-delusion?

What is it about?

Questionable research practices, more specifically, self-citation practices were investigated in a total of 359 open access articles published in the most prestigious journals in the field of applied linguistics over five years (2019–2023). Self-citation means making a reference to an author or more authors own published work. Self-citation is sometimes necessary and unavoidable, but excessive self-citation—admittedly, it is very difficult to draw the line as to where it begins—can lead to unjustified advantages. Scientometric indicators are very important in academia, as they direct promotion and grant opportunities. Different countries have different protocols in this regard. In Hungary, stricter rules are followed, as only so-called "independent" references are taken into account, and self-citations are disregarded in scientometric summaries. However, in some other countries, for example, in Italy and Indonesia, self-citations are considered equivalent to citations by others. Thus, generally, it can be claimed that, despite all efforts, international practices do not follow a common standard, and quantitative scientometric indicators can lead to inequality. In this study, the researchers used a systematic review to obtain a comprehensive picture of the self-citation practices that were typical in prominent journals in the field of applied linguistics from 2019 to 2023.

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Photo by Elias Maurer on Unsplash

Photo by Elias Maurer on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The authors found that the number of self-citations in the studied sample was relatively high, as they found a total of 2,710 self-citations in the 359 articles examined. There were, of course, large differences between the individual articles, and while there were articles in which self-citation did not occur at all, the authors also found an instance where self-citation took place 45 times within a single article. The fact that only 9% of the articles examined (i.e., 33 articles) did not contain any self-citations, and that there were on average more than 7 self-citations per article, showed that self-citation is relatively common. The authors found no significant difference in the number of self-citations between years, suggesting that the extent of self-citation does not depend on the year of publication. Besides the year aspect, the authors examined whether there were differences in the number of self-citations between journals. There were significant differences in this respect, with the main finding being that journals that previously had rules restricting self-citation in their author guidelines had fewer self-citations. The researchers also reviewed the author guidelines and found that there are very few clear, written, explicit rules regarding self-citation. The researchers thus point to the importance of establishing (preferably uniform) rules on self-citation in author guidelines. In addition to adequate quality assurance, the importance of research ethics is gaining ground across all scientific disciplines, and the researchers would like to draw attention to this matter as well.

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