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112 votes
Accepted

How should I respond to a reviewer's complaint about self-citation?

The answers here of Solar Mike and corey979 are correct, but let me point out two additional issues. First, it might be that without your citations you could validly be accused of self plagiarism. ...
Buffy's user avatar
  • 400k
68 votes
Accepted

Counter strategy against group that repeatedly does strategic self-citations and ignores other relevant research

First, I think it's important to have a more precise diagnosis of the problem. Self-citations by themselves are not necessarily a problem---even 30% self-citations might be quite reasonable depending ...
jakebeal's user avatar
  • 191k
61 votes

My h-index is very low and I want to increase it

Write papers that people will want to cite. In particular: When you come up with a new concept/technique, write a good explanatory section, so that people will refer to your paper for in depth ...
ObscureOwl's user avatar
  • 5,666
53 votes

How should I respond to a reviewer's complaint about self-citation?

6 out of 44 is less than 14%... If the cited works are relevant, such as building on previous results or analysis then there should be no problem. If you are citing works that are by you but not ...
Solar Mike's user avatar
  • 28.3k
52 votes
Accepted

Why publish a research paper when a blog post or a lecture slide can have more citation count than a journal paper?

It's not fair to only look at the peak of the distribution. For an apples-to-apples comparison, you need to compare peaks to peaks and averages to averages. The two sources you mention are both in the ...
Allure's user avatar
  • 137k
29 votes
Accepted

Should I mention an achievement without a proof on my CV?

Like many other things in life, academia also works on the honor system. Many things that show up on CVs are not verifiable (being a reviewer for this or that journal, a panelist for NSF, having ...
Wolfgang Bangerth's user avatar
27 votes

Is it a good idea to put hobby pictures on my academic website?

I'll assume you are smart enough not to put pictures there that harm your case or make you seem unserious professionally. But, while such things won't actually account for much, they might induce a ...
Buffy's user avatar
  • 400k
27 votes

Post-publication "marketing". Is it necessary?

It depends on your goals. If you are in the early stages of your career, then marketing your publications has real potential to improve your visibility with your colleagues and with that your career ...
Maarten Buis's user avatar
  • 46.7k
21 votes

Is it a good idea to put hobby pictures on my academic website?

I think it's nice to see some photos, personal information, and/or hobbies on an academic website; as you say, it gives the place a human touch. So long as the photos themselves aren't offensive, I ...
Ben's user avatar
  • 73k
20 votes

Counter strategy against group that repeatedly does strategic self-citations and ignores other relevant research

What you encounter is unfortunately common, even 20 years ago. I don't know if there is an English equivalent, but it is called in German Zitierkartell (citation cartel). I encountered it the first ...
Thorsten S.'s user avatar
  • 4,791
18 votes

Is relevant self-citation an effective way to promote your work?

The answer might depend on how you define "effective promotion", but there is scientometric research concluding that self-citation leads to more citations - crucially including more citations by ...
Anyon's user avatar
  • 29.8k
18 votes

Why publish a research paper when a blog post or a lecture slide can have more citation count than a journal paper?

The instances you mention don't show that statistically blogs or slides get cited well. Just that you find some instances in the universe of events. Papers tend to be abstracted (chemistry does this ...
guest's user avatar
  • 272
17 votes
Accepted

Is it a good idea to put hobby pictures on my academic website?

Here's an unhappy but sadly well-documented observation. In fields like STEM where bias (particularly gender bias) is widespread, people unconciously filter what they see through biased frames: they ...
Greg Martin's user avatar
  • 3,338
15 votes

Post-publication "marketing". Is it necessary?

Research and the subsequent writing of papers uses up a lot of time and resources. If by promoting your research after publication you increase visibility, readership and impact of your paper, it ...
Sursula's user avatar
  • 22.6k
12 votes

Why publish a research paper when a blog post or a lecture slide can have more citation count than a journal paper?

Slides and blog posts do not get more citations than journal papers. You've given non-representative or invalid examples: For the paper following a blog post: It's the ArXiv paper that has the ...
einpoklum's user avatar
  • 40.8k
11 votes
Accepted

Benefits of being a guest editor of a journal?

Disciplines are typically organized in loose groups around a fairly small number of persons. They organize conferences, are editors, are on boards of professional organizations, etc. They are always ...
Maarten Buis's user avatar
  • 46.7k
9 votes

How to suggest textbook improvement to author?

Is it considered inappropriate to email the author and suggest this as a possible improvement? It is very appropriate and would probably be very welcome. As the author of a textbook myself, I am ...
Dan Romik's user avatar
  • 202k
9 votes

My h-index is very low and I want to increase it

In addition to writing papers that others will want to cite, another important factor is simply the number of publications that you have- if you look at the profiles of researchers who have h-index ...
Brian Borchers's user avatar
9 votes

Is it a good idea to put hobby pictures on my academic website?

It depends on how your site is structured. If you have a tab for "Studies", "Travel", "Photography", "CV", "About", ... then yes, this is not a ...
WoJ's user avatar
  • 9,674
9 votes

Post-publication "marketing". Is it necessary?

I had this question recently myself and ended up creating (separate) professional account for the simple reason that in the - non-representative - sample of peers I observed, those who had these ...
Aolon's user avatar
  • 1,853
8 votes

How to suggest textbook improvement to author?

From my experience, it's a perfectly valid reason to contact the author, and I'd recommend it actually. Of course, what happens then is hard to predict. Maybe the author won't reply (this tends to ...
darij grinberg's user avatar
8 votes

Counter strategy against group that repeatedly does strategic self-citations and ignores other relevant research

Science is not a competition. The "counter strategy" is to ignore the "problem" and do excellent science yourself. They are making a fool of themselves, and most other scientists will realise that as ...
Louic's user avatar
  • 10.4k
8 votes

How should I respond to a reviewer's complaint about self-citation?

In all likelihood, I would ignore the comment. (If you need to respond to editor, just write that the references are all related to the current paper and were left as is. Make your comment short......
guest's user avatar
  • 614
8 votes

Why publish a research paper when a blog post or a lecture slide can have more citation count than a journal paper?

Apart from the overgeneralization in your premise, which was pointed out in other answers: Blog posts and lecture slides don't carry the scientific authority of peer-reviewed and professionally ...
henning no longer feeds AI's user avatar
8 votes

My h-index is very low and I want to increase it

The most sustainable and rewarding "tip" is to do good work which is interesting to your peers, and present it well. All other approaches are merely tactics that will only get you so-and-so far. I ...
lighthouse keeper's user avatar
7 votes

How should I respond to a reviewer's complaint about self-citation?

Merely counting the number of self-citations is meaningless. The appropriateness of each citation should be judged on its own merit. If you do decide to respond to the comment (and you may choose to ...
Thomas Steinke's user avatar
6 votes

Why publish a research paper when a blog post or a lecture slide can have more citation count than a journal paper?

The principal contemporary reason for formally publishing articles is that governments and institutional administrators demand of researchers proof of their productivity. Being unable to assess such ...
Dan Fox's user avatar
  • 3,416
6 votes

What happens if your research doesn't get published?

In academia it's true that by "publication" people often mean "peer-reviewed publication", that is a publication which has been checked and validated by other researchers and consequently accepted in ...
Erwan's user avatar
  • 13.6k
5 votes

Is it worth creating a profile with Publons?

This is ultimately a subjective question, but one can ask: what is the value added of publons? Or better, what is unique in publons that is not found elsewhere? In my understanding, the answer to the ...
luchonacho's user avatar
  • 2,288

Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible