Self-citation by researchers: narcissism or an inevitable outcome of a cohesive and sustained research program?

Full text

iee 7 (2014) 1
ieeiee
Ideas in Ecology and Evolution 7: 1±2, 2014
doi:10.4033/iee.2014.7.1.e
©
2014 The Author.
©
Ideas in Ecology and Evolution 2014
Received 12 January 2014; Accepted 16 January 2014
Editorial
Self-citation by resear chers: narciss ism or an inevitable outcome of a cohesive
and sustained resea rch progr am?
Steven J. Cook e and M ichael R . Donaldson
S
teven J. Cooke (steven_cooke @ca rleton.ca), F ish E cology and Conservation Physiology Laboratory, Depart
m
ent
of Biology and Institute of E nvi ron
m
ental
S
cience, C arleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Michael R. D onaldson (
m
ichael.r.donaldson@g
m
ail.co
m
), Depart
m
ent of Natural Resourc es and Environ
m
ental
S
ciences, University of Il linois, Urbana, Illinois, U
S
A
The research community remains focused with
enumerating, evaluating, and ranking the research
productivity of individual authors despite the apparent
shortcomings of doing so. Basic yet widely used citation
metrics such as ³WRWDO FLWHV´ (Adam 2002) or ³+LUsch (h)
LQGH[´ (Hirsch 2005) require a count of the number of
times that a given DXWKRU¶V works are cited. Fortunately
there are a variety of electronic bibliometric tools (e.g.,
Web of Science, Google Scholar, Scopus) that do that
work for us. Interestingly, those tools tend to generate
default counts that can include self-citations. Self-
citations can be defined as occurrences in which the
citing and cited papers share at least one author in
common (Asknes 2003), although various definitions
have been proposed (Fowler and Aksnes 2007, Costas et
al. 2010). Self-citations can be easily filtered out with a
few clicks to generate ³FRUUHFWHG´ indices (e.g.,
Schreiber 2007, Brown 2009) or those that discount
self-cites (e.g., Ferrara and Romero 2013), but is it
necessary to do so? Here, we argue that self-citations
need not necessarily be considered a form of narcissistic
behavior, and instead could be indicative of a cohesive
research program, in which authors refer to their prev-
ious relevant works in order to enhance their subsequent
contributions to knowledge.
When applying for scientific positions, promotions,
tenure, or awards, one must decide whether they will
report their ³SURGXFWLYLW\´ with or without self-citations,
or include both. And, those assessing such researchers
must decide which they wish to consider and whether
they will ³SHQDOL]H´ someone that fails to exclude self-
citations. Some individuals may feel that it is abhorrent
to include self-citations while others may be indifferent.
On the surface, ³VHOI-FLWDWLRQ´ may appear to border on
narcissism. However, the argument could also be made
that self-citation is in fact an indicator of RQH¶V promin-
ence and productivity in their field. Consider a research-
er with a focused research program publishing year after
year on related topics, with papers building upon ideas
and discoveries codified in previous work. One would
expect significant reliance on research papers from the
same research lab. Indeed, is that not what an ³LGHDO´
research program should look like? Similarly, if one is
working in a highly specialized field where there is
simply little other research effort, self-citation would be
essential. The more productive one is in terms of output
in quantity of papers would also inherently lead to
greater potential for self-citations. In this sense, it is
reasonable to think that self-citation itself could be used
as an indicator of the extent to which one has a cohesive
and coordinated research program, with the extent of
self-citation scaling with extent of output (in number of
papers) from a research program.
When building a research program, self-citations can
be an important aspect of developing a cohesive
knowledge base and moving science forward. For
example, if a research program has already been estab-
lished, either by the author themselves or their col-
laborators and co-authors, it follows that self-citations
would be necessary to develop the rationale that the
current work is building on previously accumulated
knowledge. Likewise, when interpreting findings by
drawing on existing literature, self-citations are often
necessary. For example, depending on the field of study
and research questions being asked, the existing
literature may be predominated by the DXWKRU¶V own
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

iee 7 (2014) 2
research team, requiring self-citations (e.g., emerging
fields of study like molecular ecology). Thus, self-
citations can serve the dual purpose of providing
rationale for the present work and also incrementing the
knowledge provided by existing work. In this sense,
self-citation could indicate a cohesive research program.
A unified body of knowledge could in turn influence
others (Donaldson and Cooke 2014). Indeed, Fowler
and Aksnes (2007) show that the more one cites oneself,
the more one is cited by others.
There are certainly instances where self-citation
would be considered problematic. The potential for
egregious self-citations exists (i.e., authors that go out of
their way to cite their own work, even if only tangent-
ially related), the onus for avoiding the manipulation of
self-citations falls on the authors, or at the very least is
something that should be corrected at the peer-review
stage, prior to publication. There are also a number of
strategies for identifying egregious attempts to manip-
ulate bibliometrics through self-citation analysis
(Bartneck and Kokkelmans 2011). Likewise, a research-
er could intentionally cite their own work while failing
to consider the broader literature. Such behaviour would
be especially egregious if the research area is well
developed. In the most insidious cases this could be
done by researchers to directly manipulate their citation
metrics (Testa 2008). However, it could also be done by
a naïve researcher and simply reflect a lack of
familiarity with relevant literature. Yet, conversely,
failing to cite RQH¶V own work if and when it is the most
relevant reference is no different than not citing some-
one HOVH¶V key paper. That is, intentionally avoiding
self-citation should not be the norm.
Trying to discern whether individual self-citation pat-
terns are legitimate is probably best achieved at the level
of an individual paper as judged by knowledgeable
referees and astute, experienced editors (Cooke and
Lapointe 2012). Has the author used a diversity of ref-
erences, paying homage to the classic foundational work
while simultaneously including contemporary refer-
ences? Extensive self-citation may not be inherently
wrong if the referees and editor judge that the references
used (both self-citations and others) are indeed the most
relevant references. If the scientific community serves
as a filter to unwarranted self-citations during the peer
review process, then we argue that self-citations²no
matter the extent²are relevant and should be included
as overall measures of a UHVHDUFKHU¶V productivity and
influence in that it is an inevitable outcome of a
coordinated, sustained and productive research program.
References
Adam, D. 2002. Citation analysis: The counting house.
Nature 415: 726±729. CrossRef
Aksnes, D.W. 2003. A macro study of self-citation.
Scientometrics 56: 235±246. CrossRef
Bartneck, C., and S. Kokkelmans. 2011. Detecting h-
index manipulation through self-citation analysis.
Scientometrics 87: 85±98. CrossRef
Brown, R.J.C. 2009. A simple method for excluding
self-citation from the h-index: the b-index. Online
Information Review 33: 1129±1136. CrossRef
Cooke, S.J., and N.W.R. Lapointe. 2012. Addressing
editor(ial) malpractice in scientific journals. Ideas in
Ecology and Evolution 5:84±92. CrossRef
Costas, R., van Leeuwen, T.N., and M. Bordons. 2010.
Self-citations at the meso and individual levels:
effects of different calculation methods Sciento-
metrics 82: 517±537. CrossRef
Donaldson, M.R. and S.J. Cooke. 2014. Scientific
publications: Moving beyond quality and quantity
toward influence. BioScience 64: 12±13.
Ferrara, E., and A.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 of Information Science 64: 2332±
2339. CrossRef
Fowler, J.H., and D.W. Aksnes. 2007. Does self-citation
pay? Scientometrics. 72: 427±437. CrossRef
+LUVFK-(  $QLQGH[ WRTXDQWLI\DQ LQGLYLGXDO¶V
scientific research output. Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences of the United States of
America 102: 16569±16572. CrossRef
Schreiber, M. 2007. Self-citation corrections for the
Hirsch index. Europhysics Letters 78: 30002.
CrossRef
Testa, J. 2008. Playing the system puts self-citation's
impact under review. Nature 455: 729. CrossRef