FINAL TAKE Here is a depressing thought as you head back into the office on Monday: "Your desk is probably dirtier than the office bathroom," says Self, citing research done by Charles P. Gerba, a University of Arizona professor of environmental microbiology.
"[T]he average man self-cites 56% more often than … the average woman," write Molly King, a sociology Ph.D. student at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, and co-authors in Men set their own cites high: Gender and self-citation across fields and over time, the draft paper presented at the meeting.
The rate of self-citation could influence our analysis if there are gender differences in the propensity to self-cite.
We also found that UK researchers were less likely to self-cite compared to all other countries, only 15% of their citations were self-citations (χ = 8.7, d.f. = 1, p = 0.032).
Based on the total number of citations for all 419 papers and the number of self-cites among all authors named for each publication (528), we found a self-cite rate of slightly more than 20% (20.4%).
Thus, the self-cite rate for the papers from the NIAID HIV/AIDS clinical trials networks is within the 'normative' range for author self-citation, despite the high level of co-authorship.
New citation statistics such as the Eigenfactor, or its derivative, the Article influence score (Table 1) exclude self-cites.
Apart from obviously false citations it is difficult to find a universally accepted definition or even a numerical cut-off value for the unscientific use of self-cites.
Often, for example, self-cites refer readers to important related articles, to sources of information presented in the text, or to papers that are essential for understanding the historical development of research projects.
The article influence score is different from the impact factor because it does not consider self-cites and does not rely on citations from journals included in Thomson Reuters Science Citation Indicess only.
