The practice of self-citations: a longitudinal study

Silvio Peroni (), Paolo Ciancarini (), Aldo Gangemi (), Andrea Giovanni Nuzzolese (), Francesco Poggi () and Valentina Presutti ()
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Silvio Peroni: University of Bologna
Paolo Ciancarini: University of Bologna
Aldo Gangemi: University of Bologna
Andrea Giovanni Nuzzolese: National Research Council
Francesco Poggi: University of Bologna
Valentina Presutti: National Research Council

Scientometrics, 2020, vol. 123, issue 1, No 12, 253-282

Abstract: Abstract In this article, we discuss the outcomes of an experiment where we analysed whether and to what extent the introduction, in 2012, of the new research assessment exercise in Italy (a.k.a. Italian Scientific Habilitation) affected self-citation behaviours in the Italian research community. The Italian Scientific Habilitation attests to the scientific maturity of researchers and in Italy, as in many other countries, is a requirement for accessing to a professorship. To this end, we obtained from ScienceDirect 35,673 articles published from 1957 to 2016 by the participants to the 2012 Italian Scientific Habilitation, that resulted in the extraction of 1,379,050 citations retrieved through Semantic Publishing technologies. Our analysis showed an overall increment in author self-citations (i.e. where the citing article and the cited article share at least one author) in several of the 24 academic disciplines considered. However, we depicted a stronger causal relation between such increment and the rules introduced by the 2012 Italian Scientific Habilitation in 10 out of 24 disciplines analysed.

Keywords: Author self-citations; Author network self-citations; Self-citations; RDF; Semantic Publishing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11192-020-03397-6

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