While using bibliometric techniques to measure how disruptive research papers are to their field of study, Robin Haunschild and Lutz Bornmann stumbled across a strange phenomenon. Just under 45,000 academic papers contained citations to themselves, they found.

Authors based in the United States had the highest number of paper self-citations at 13,128, followed by those based in China at 5,363, and the United Kingdom at 4,493. Some true self-citations may indicate researchers or journals trying to game the system to boost their citation counts, said Bornmann, who is a sociologist of science at the Max Planck Society in Munich.

Stéphane Bonhomme, an economist at the University of Chicago who edits Quantitative Economics – the journal with the highest number of paper self-citations in study, 165 self-citing papers out of 416 studies in total – says he was surprised to see the numbers for his publication. But after taking a closer look, Bonhomme said, he discovered that many paper self-citations were coming from the authors referencing their own appendices and supplementary materials that were published under different DOIs – a fairly common practice in economics.

 
Source https://retractionwatch.com/2025/03/19/paper-self-citations-bornmann-haunschild-bibliometrics/

Another high-profile case has interested scientists. Read now