self-citations

[Loet Leydesdorff]

Dear Steve,

This message amazed me and therefore I looked it up. The press release says
only that it had "little effect on the relative rank of high impact
journals." This means probably that these journals are all subject to a
relatively similar (downward) effect, but only on the high impact end. I
expect that smaller and more specialist journals will be more heavily
affected by this "correction" than larger ones.

Note that journal self-citations are no "self-citations", but only citations
among authors working in the same field. In specialist areas these
self-citations can be highly functional to the development of the respective
research fronts.

In aggregated journal-journal citation matrices the function of the main
diagonal ("self-citations") on the structure is usually neglegible. The
factor structure, for example, is robust against using Pearson correlations
or rank-order correlations. Thus, the structure of science is not affected
by these effects. One may wish to use these journal self-citations as an
indicator of the restrictedness of the scientific communication in a
specialty area.

With kind regards,


Loet


  _____

Loet Leydesdorff
Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR)
Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam
Tel.: +31-20- 525 6598; fax: +31-20- 525 3681
 <mailto:loet at leydesdorff.net> loet at leydesdorff.net ;
<http://www.leydesdorff.net/> http://www.leydesdorff.net/



 <http://www.upublish.com/books/leydesdorff-sci.htm> The Challenge of
Scientometrics ;  <http://www.upublish.com/books/leydesdorff.htm> The
Self-Organization of the Knowledge-Based Society


> -----Original Message-----
> From: ASIS&T Special Interest Group on Metrics
> [ <mailto:SIGMETRICS at listserv.utk.edu> mailto:SIGMETRICS at listserv.utk.edu]
On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
> Sent: Friday, July 23, 2004 10:43 PM
> To: SIGMETRICS at listserv.utk.edu
> Subject: [SIGMETRICS] self-citations
>
> I'm not surprised that self-citations journal self-citations
> are too weak to have much effect on the journal impact
> factor, but I'll bet author self-citations have a somewhat
> bigger effect on author (or article) citation counts. (Tim
> Brody is doing the OA/non-OA citation stats both ways: with
> and without (author) self-citations, just to be sure. Good to
> know we need not bother doing a control on journal
> self-citations.  Chrs, S
>
>  On Fri, 23 Jul 2004, Colin Steele wrote:
>
> >
>
http://www.thomson.com/common/view_news_release.jsp?body_include=press_room/
news_releases/scientific_healthcare_mg/Study_Reveals_Weak_Impact_Factor_of_S
elf_Citations&section=corp&secondary=pr_market_group&tertiary=scientific&sub
section=pressroom&title=New_Thomson_Study_Reveals_Weak_Correlation_Between_S
elf-Citations_and_Impact_Factor
> >
> > --------------------------------------------------------------
> > Colin Steele
> > Emeritus Fellow
> > University Librarian, Australian National University
> (1980-2002) and
> > Director Scholarly Information Strategies (2002-2003) W.K. Hancock
> > Building (043) The Australian National University Canberra
> ACT 0200
> > Australia
> >
> > Tel +61 (0)2 612 58983
> > Fax +61 (0)2 612 55526
> > Email: colin.steele at anu.edu.au
> >
> >
>

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