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Dr. Brett Thombs and Dr. Russell Steele

A Method for Identifying Journal-generated Self-citation: Application to General Medicine, Cardiology, and Psychiatry Journals

ALL ARE WELCOME

SYNOPSIS:

The impact of academic research is commonly quantified through citation metrics. It is well-known that some authors inflate their citation counts through self-citation. The practice of 鈥渃oercive self-citation鈥� by editors of academic journals has also been described, by which editors make requests to authors during the article review process to add citations from the editor鈥檚 own journal without any rationale provided. That is, the editor gives no indication that the manuscript is lacking in attribution or contains important inaccuracies or specific gaps, which will be addressed via a discussion of a recommended citation. Journal editors have also attempted to increase citations to their own journal and, thus, the journal鈥檚 impact factor, through tactics, such as requiring that all authors submitting to the journal cite an article on the journal鈥檚 ethics policies. Surveys of academics have established that inappropriate journal-generated self-citation is not a rare occurrence. However, there is no existing mechanism for identifying journals with atypical patterns of self-citation suggestive of journal-generated self-citation. Thomson-Reuters publishes impact factors adjusted for self-citation, but this method does not separate appropriately high levels of journal self-citation, such as when journals specialized on a relatively narrow topic, from inappropriate journal-generated self-citation. We will present a method that our research group has developed for identifying patterns of self-citation that may reflect inappropriate journal-generated self-citation and will demonstrate application of the method to general medicine, cardiology, and psychiatry journals.

OBJECTIVES:

1) To describe the phenomenon of journal-generated self-citation and how it may be used by some journal editors to artificially inflate citation counts and impact factor;

2) To describe the development of a method for identifying journals with patterns of self-citation that may be consistent with inappropriate journal-generated self-citation; and

3) To demonstrate the mcapplication of this method in general medicine, psychiatry, and cardiology journals.

BIO:

Brett Thombs:

Russell Steele: