The relationship between co-authorship, currency of references and author self-citations

  • Authors:

  • Wen-Yau Cathy Lin;Mu-Hsuan Huang

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Information and Library Science, Tamkang University, Taipei, Taiwan;Department of Library and Information Science, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan 10617

  • Venue:
  • Scientometrics
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

This paper attempts to identify the relationship between co-authorship and the currency of the references and author self-citations in the key journals of environmental engineering. The results show that the self-citation rate of co-authored articles is higher than in single-authored articles. A statistically significant correlation is identified between the numbers of co-authors, the rate of author self-citing and the author self-cited; though it was a low correlation. The value of coefficient correlation between the number of co-authors and the author self-citing rate is slightly higher than that between the number of co-authors and the author self-cited rate, which indicates that the number of co-authors hold a stronger correlation with the self-citing rate than the self-cited rate. Meanwhile, self-citing references are found to be more up-to-date than references to others. The range of publication years of self-citing references is smaller than that of references to others, indicating that researchers tend to preferentially cite their own recent works. There is no significant difference in the latest references between self-citing references and the references to others. It might result from electronic journals that provide an easy access to the most current publications.