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How hot are hot papers? The issue of prolificacy and self-citation stacking

Author

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  • Mansour Haghighat

    (Shiraz University
    ISC)

  • Javad Hayatdavoudi

    (ISC)

Abstract

The nature of self-citation is not unequivocal as it fluctuates across the borders of approbation and condemnation. While it is tenable that scholars tend to build upon and thus appeal to their previous work, excessive self-citation is considered as a likely strategic tool to showcase one’s achievement, inflate citations, and distort bibliometric indices. The present study aimed to explore how self-citation may affect hot paper designation in Web of Science (WoS) in a short-term citation window. To this end, we studied the self-citation behavior of the authors contributing a sample of hot papers in a select number of journals over two consecutive periods. The cited and citing papers were analyzed in terms of synchronous and diachronous self-citations as well as co-authorship and co-citation networks. The results showed that self-citation evidently proved problematic in as short a citation window of hot papers as two months. The results also suggested that including too many cited references in a given article might be a potential strategy to inflate citations. Thus, we suggest that hot paper designation should assume sensitivity to self-citation, or at least, excessive self-citations by either ruling them out or setting limits on how often an author can reasonably cite earlier works. Still, this is not an attempt at policing excessive self-citation practice of a group of authors and by no means intends to criticize the authors; rather, we aimed to cite an example of how excessive self-citation practice may distort the original agenda of a bibliometric designation in WoS, hot papers.

Suggested Citation

  • Mansour Haghighat & Javad Hayatdavoudi, 2021. "How hot are hot papers? The issue of prolificacy and self-citation stacking," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(1), pages 565-578, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:126:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1007_s11192-020-03749-2
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-020-03749-2
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    References listed on IDEAS

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