Self-Citation in PJCR's Engineering Journals and their Significance in Determining Impact Factor during 2002-2006

Abstract

Since reference practices influence Journal Impact Factor (JIF), Author Self- Citation (ASC), number of times an author cites herself / himself, and Journal Self-Citation (JSC), number of times the journal cites itself, as a portion of total citations should be considered in citation analysis. ISI provides quantitative indicators for publications in English language. Therefore, those scientific journals in different countries that publish in national languages have less chance to be evaluated based on bibliometric indicators. For this reason, Regional Information Center for Science and Technology (RICeST) affiliated to the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology of Iran started to construct the Persian Science Citation Index (PSCI) and Persian Journal Citation Reports (PJCR) as products of ISC in 2000, and released the services from 2004. PJCR and PSCI are used to conduct the research. At the time of the study 51 Persian engineering journals were indexed in ISC with IF in PJCR. The aim of the study is to find if the JIF is affected by both ASC and JSC for Persian journals in engineering subject category during 2002-2006. The results show that within the five years mean rates for JSC and ASC are 41% and 66%, respectively. Findings also report that the correlation between JSC and ASC with IF is statistically significant (R= 0.300, sig. = 0.032; R= 0.397, sig. = 0.004, respectively). Moreover, after self-citation removal, the maximum rankings change was observed (either positive or negative). With or without inclusion of author self-citations and journal self-citations about 13.7% and 15.7% of journals maintained the position. There is also no correlation between JIF and the number of articles (R= - 0.031, sig. = 0.831). According to the findings, the study suggests that Persian journals' editorial boards in engineering field implement a policy with regard to articles selection as well as authors' citation behavior.

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