discover how a known idea or innovation has been confirmed, applied, improved, extended, or corrected.. We found that the WOS database included 76% of the Covid-19 papers contained within the journals themselves. 2010; Carley et al. The identification of a fixed fraction, such as the upper decile, as outliers is evidently inappropriate. New York, NY. Ioannidis et al. This earnest for more knowledge is further bolstered by increased government funding for Covid-19 research. Viiu, G. A. Median and range were used to represent continuous variables (not normally distributed) while we used frequencies and percentages to represent categorical variables. It is used by academic institutions in decisions about academic tenure, promotion and hiring, and hence also used by authors in deciding which journal to publish in. Some of these limitations include: For a high-level overview of normalized metrics and their limitations, see: For an overview of the RCR and how it's calculated, see: Hutchins BI, Yuan X, Anderson JM, Santangelo GM. A., Bresciani, K., Ramos, T., De Matos, L., Castellane, P., & Cerdeira, M. (2015). New factors in the evaluation of scientific literature through citation indexing. Reward or persuasion? A higher rate of self-citation is expected for co-author than for strict author self-citation, and, in general, a rising rate of co-author self-citation is observed with the growth in average number of authors per paper over time (van Raan 1998; Aksnes 2003; Glnzel and Thijs 2004b). Michael D. Brandt, volume123,pages 11191147 (2020)Cite this article. This is most easily interpreted on the linear plot, whereas statistical sense would suggest that the data should be log-plotted because of the skewed negative binomial distribution. https://doi.org/10.1002/andp.200910360. Scientometrics,121(3), 16351684. The 2020 Journal Impact Factors are based on citations in 2020 to articles published in 2018 and 2019. Yang, D. H., Li, X., Sun, X. X., & Wan, J. Seven myths in bibliometrics about facts and fiction in quantitative science studies. Elsevier Scopus provides traditional citation counts, the Field Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI) and benchmarking. It is argued that, in fact, the status of self-citations is more than that of a stepchild in the family of scientometrics (Schubert 2016). American Sociologist,22(2), 147158. The 2020 Journal Impact Factors, published in the 2021 Journal Citation Report, are based on citations in 2020 to articles published in 2018 and 2019. Scientometrics,109(3), 19892005. Journal selection. received by all papers in all fields published during the 10-year period divided It should be obvious that citations (to older papers) come from references (in newer papers) and that the totals of references and cites are the same, but it is less obvious that the distributions differ. Science Studies,1(1), 9599. There are too many studies to list, some dealing with broad and others with specific fields, and differing with respect to time windows, but a few may be mentioned with the statistics they report: 9% overall, 15% for the physical sciences, 6% for the social sciences, and 3% for the humanities, using co-author self-citation (Snyder and Bonzi 1998); 11%, using author self-citation (Fowler and Aksnes 2007); roughly 15% of references and 13% of citations, using co-author self-citation (Sugimoto and Larivire 2018); about 13%, using co-author self-citation (Mishra et al. (2004b). Engineering (225 Highly Cited Researchers) has a continuous range that climbs to near 20% but then has a steeper part of the curve. https://doi.org/10.1556/scient.67.2006.3.11. Scopus. The data set, which lists around 100,000 researchers, shows that at least 250 scientists have amassed more than 50% of their citations from themselves or their co-authors, while the median. This table shows some sample publications A-D that are in different subjects, and have different document types. A review of the literature on citation impact indicators. No clear reference thresholds and no firm consensus on the management of self-citation data has emerged but opinion now appears to favor leaving self-citations in the dataeven in the context of research evaluation, even for individuals, and thus contrary to traditional viewsbut accounting for them in some manner (Glnzel 2008; Costas et al. It has recently been suggested there may be increasing misrepresentation of research performance by individuals who self-cite inordinately to achieve scores and win rewards. Those citations are from articles published 2 was repeated with the other ESI fields. Author self-citations in the field of ecology. Field weighted citation impact (FWCI) is calculated by dividing the total number of citations an article has received the year it was published and 3 complete calendar years after its publication by the average number of citations articles of the same field, publication type, and publication year are expected to receive within the same time period. Evidence of complex citer motivations. 2015; Galvez 2017; Hyland and Jiang 2018; Mishra et al. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology,61(7), 14401463. Are citations indicative or predictive of translational or clinical applications? https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02458380. PLOS ONE, 11(2), e0148257. time. Gaming the metrics: Misconduct and manipulation in academic research. The problem will arise if cronyism occurs only in isolated instances. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.4630360402. Ideas in Ecology and Evaluation,7(1), 12. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology,62(2), 230235. The preliminary clusters were then cleaned by visual inspection and further aggregated where appropriate. The average citation per article for these publications was 8.1. A paper with an exceptionally high ratio of self- to total-cites is clearly not reflecting the same degree of influence as one with a similar citation count where most of the cites are from other researchers. Trends in Ecology & Evolution,23(5), 250252. Welcome to the Next Generation Essential Science Indicators. 2010). It is important to recognize that citation counts grow over time. We describe this graphical procedure for identifying exceptional self-citation rates but emphasize the necessity for expert interpretation of the citation profiles of specific individuals, particularly in fields with atypical self-citation patterns. In 1979, Eugene Garfield noted: Theoretically, self-citations are a way of manipulating citation rates. An RCR of 1 is considered average, while an RCR greater than 1 is above average. Journal of the American Society for Information Science,36(4), 223229. Clinical medicine is the largest field (448 Highly Cited Researchers). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03417-5, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03417-5. A note on self-citation rates in astronomical papers. The following excerpt from a Citation Rates table reveals that on Insights into the relationship between the h-Index and self-citations. 2), Linear plots by Essential Science Indicators field of the pattern of self-citation to highly cited papers authored by Highly Cited Researchers identified by analysing Web of Science data for 20082018 and to (self-citing from later publications) highly cited papers on which a researcher is also an author or co-author. Includes research papers, features, brief communications, case reports, technical notes, chronology, and full papers that were published in a journal and/or presented at a symposium or conference [5]. Fong, E. A. White, H. D. (2001). For the 2019 Highly Cited Researchers analysis, the papers included in the preliminary data development were those published and cited during 20082018. This suggests that journal impact factor, which is a product of the number of citations that recently published articles receive, will likely be drastically influenced by the number of Covid-19 papers that a journal has included within its pages in the previous years. Zhivotovsky, L. A., & Krutovsky, K. V. (2008). Leblond, M. (2012). In every field-based profile, some researcher portfolios are on a steeper part of the curve with values above but continuous with the central range. [54] Field-dependent factors are usually listed as an issue to be tackled not only when comparison across disciplines are made, but also when different fields of research of one discipline are being compared. Citation: Brandt MD, Ghozy SA, Kallmes DF, McDonald RJ, Kadirvel RD (2022) Comparison of citation rates between Covid-19 and non-Covid-19 articles across 24 major scientific journals. Meadows, A. J., & OConnor, J. G. (1971). The influence of international collaboration on the impact of research results: Some simple mathematical considerations concerning the role of self-citations. The field-specific self-citation profiles, showing a data point for each Highly Cited Researcher and following the style of Fig. The Citation Rates table under the Field Baselines menu displays data on the average citation rates of papers within the scientific fields over each of the past 10 years. This raises questions about editorial and refereeing standards and the ability of the research base to manage its own affairs. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2017.12.004. By comparison, there are points on a higher trajectory and, while these were largely between the low and high statistical indicators, some exceed the high indicative outlier threshold value. Open access increases citations of papers in ecology. Disciplines were selected based on the likelihood of having high relevancy to Covid-19 and, therefore, a sufficient volume of Covid-19-related papers in that fields premier journals. Oakland, CA. 129-144). https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24046. Between 2000 and 2015, the proportion of citations that went to this elite group grew from 14% to 21%. A discussion of measuring the top-1% most-highly cited - Springer When negative binomial regression is used to minimize the influence of other variables such as article number variation and field of research, Covid-19 papers have still experienced more than 80% increase in citations relative to non-Covid-19 papers. 8,835 of these papers received a number of citations that placed them in the top 1% of all Engineering papers in the past 10 years. PLOS ONE promises fair, rigorous peer review, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-2144-6. Sugimoto, C. R., & Larivire, V. (2018). (1986). A citation is a reference to a specific work cited in another work. 2010). (2019) were right to draw attention to the statistical properties of these distributions: they have regular and testable properties. The highly cited papers were clustered by author, initially using an algorithmic approach. Characteristics revealed by an analysis of researcher portfolios at the level of the Essential Science Indicators fields include: A consistent central or normal range of average self-citation for researchers in every discipline-based category. 2010; Cooke and Donaldson 2014; Huang and Lin 2011; Schubert 2016; Galvez 2017; Hyland and Jiang 2018; Mishra et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Before considering what rates or levels of self-citation are excessive and suggestive of citation manipulation, we need to consider the definition of self-citation and the factors apart from merit or manipulation that influence the extent of self-citation in the literature. At least 2 years of . The journal impact factor, the two-year average ratio of citations to articles published, is a measure of the importance of journals. Citation analysis is the examination of citing works to an individual work (or a group of works). https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.5090160305. Web of Science - Research Impact Metrics: Citation Analysis - Research a 10-year period. A high level of self-citation may also reflect a certain insularity in terms of area of investigation, but what it does not signal is broad or community-wide influence (MacRoberts and MacRoberts 1989; van Raan 1998; Aksnes 2003; Glnzel et al. The Citation Report feature displays bar charts for the number of items published each year and the number of citations each year, plus counts for the average number of citations per item, the number of citations per year per publication, average number of citations per year per publication, and the H-index. Furthermore, many will be seen by more junior peers as exemplars of leadership in their field and the standards they set would therefore be deemed appropriate to the field. LibGuides: InCites Benchmarking & Analytics: Baselines Journal of Informetrics,12(3), 931949. Ioannidis, J. P. A. These data are therefore susceptible to a thorough quantitative analysis that is unaffected by small-number effects among papers or cites for any single cluster. Chubin, D. E., & Moitra, S. D. (1975). Field Baselines - Clarivate Frandsen, T. F. (2007). The relationship between co-authorship, currency of references and author self-citations.