title: A generalized view of self-citation: direct, co-author, collaborative, and coercive induced self-citation.
abstract: The phenomenon of self-citation can present in many different forms, including direct, co-author, collaborative, and coercive induced self-citation. It can also pertain to the citation of single scientists, groups of scientists, journals, and institutions. This article presents some case studies of extreme self-citation practices. It also discusses the implications of different types of self-citation. Self-citation is not necessarily inappropriate by default. In fact, usually it is fully appropriate but often it is even necessary. Conversely, inappropriate self-citation practices may be highly misleading and may distort the scientific literature. Coercive induced self-citation is the most difficult to discover. Coercive Induced self-citation may happen directly from reviewers of articles, but also indirectly from reviewers of grants, scientific advisors who steer a research agenda, and leaders of funding agencies who may espouse spending disproportionately large funds in research domains that perpetuate their own self-legacy. Inappropriate self-citation can be only a surrogate marker of what might be much greater distortions of the scientific corpus towards conformity to specific opinions and biases. Inappropriate self-citations eventually affect also impact metrics. Different impact metrics vary in the extent to which they can be gamed through self-citation practices. Citation indices that are more gaming-proof are available and should be more widely used. We need more empirical studies to dissect the impact of different types of inappropriate self-citation and to examine the effectiveness of interventions to limit them.
authors.affiliation: Stanford Prevention Research Center, Department of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA; Department of Health Research and Policy, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA; Department of Statistics, Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences, Stanford, CA, USA; Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford (METRICS), Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
authors.forename: John P A
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Ioannidis
mesh_terms: D001319:Authorship; D015982:Bias; D003068:Coercion; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D006801:Humans; D010380:Peer Review / Q000592:standards / Q000639:trends; D010506:Periodicals as Topic; D011643:Publishing; D058028:Research Report / Q000592:standards*; D012109:Research Support as Topic