Tell me more ×
Academia Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for academics and those enrolled in higher education. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 23 down vote favorite
2

As we know, citation counts are important to judge one's research activity. Is it good to cite one's previous works? Will it be viewed as an act of advertisement or self-promotion?

share|improve this question
4  
If it's relevant to the present study, yes. – gerrit Oct 7 '12 at 17:19
3  
Usually things are structured so that self-citations do not affect citation-counts. – paul garrett Oct 7 '12 at 17:33
5  
@Ran ... Yes, I think there is the presumption that self-citations might be motivated simply by increasing citation-counts, rather than intellectual/scientific reasons. "Conflict of interest" potential, once again, even if the conflict does not actually occur. – paul garrett Oct 7 '12 at 18:04
5  
Sometimes they are the only citations you'll ever get. – Dave Clarke Oct 8 '12 at 5:10
2  
@paulgarrett just a minor comment on your comment: there are two questions and your comment-answer concerns the first question. I was confused in the beginning, somehow, and thought your comment is a response to the last question which didn't fit the picture. – Nikos Alexandris Oct 24 '12 at 15:57
show 3 more comments

3 Answers

up vote 21 down vote accepted

Although it's true that citations are always helpful, there are obviously limits. If the majority of your citations are self-citations, that's usually considered a "red flag." If your paper that came out two years ago has 10 citations, and two or three are from within your group, nobody's really going to have a problem with that. But if your paper gets cited 45 times, and 40 of them are you citing yourself, that's not so good.

Citation counts not being "in sync" with the journals they're published in are also problematic. Publishing in no-name, third-tier journal X, your paper is probably unlikely to generate many citations. It looks suspicious when such papers get many citations.

But again, much of this can be sorted out by a judicious use of search tools like Web of Science or Scopus.

share|improve this answer
1  
Which use of search tools like Web of Science or Scopus can be considered judicious? – Nikos Alexandris Oct 24 '12 at 16:02
1  
Judicious as in "sensible," and "using good judgment." In other words, not just looking at cite counts, but going in to the cite counts, and seeing who was doing the citing. Looking to see if the number of citations corresponds with what one expects given the quality of the journal, that sort of thing. – aeismail♦ Oct 24 '12 at 20:05
your comment reads (as in "sounds") both sensible and judicious. Thanks. – Nikos Alexandris Oct 29 '12 at 17:12
up vote 19 down vote

The ethical rule has to be: cite your work if it's relevant, and don't give it preferential treatment over the work of others. In short: use the same criteria for previous references to your work as you would use for citing others. No excessive citation, no self-censorship.

share|improve this answer
5  
Unfortunately, some bias is impossible to avoid: the papers I cite are a subset of the papers I know of. I always know of my own papers, but I might never have heard of some other one. – Federico Poloni Oct 8 '12 at 8:01
1  
@FedericoPoloni Bias is inevitable, but you can strive to avoid it as much as possible… and doing extensive literature search is a prerequisite for a review. – F'x Oct 8 '12 at 8:47
1  
I hear that as you get older this bias goes away. But the guy who told me that couldn't remember why it is true... – David Ketcheson Oct 9 '12 at 16:41
up vote 4 down vote

Citing your previous work can be both good and bad. The biggest benefit is it might make people more aware of your work and how it fits in with a bigger topic. The risk is that people do not understand the relevance and think you are self-promoting and therefore take a negative view of you.

The worst case of this is when a reviewer tells you to cite some piece of work. If it is a big laundry list of articles all by the same author, you tend to get a little angry and think the reviewer is trying to promote that author. If it is a single article that is obviously related and the reviewer clearly states that he/she is an author, I tend to be happy to cite it.

The question you need to ask is: are you citing the previous work to promote it or to help the reader.

share|improve this answer

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.