Rosenblatt Matthew, Mehta Saloni, Peterson Hannah, Dadashkarimi Javid, Rodriguez Raimundo, Foster Maya L, Adkinson Brendan D, Liang Qinghao, Kimble Violet M, Ye Jean, McCusker Marie C, Farruggia Michael C, Rolison Max J, Westwater Margaret L, Jiang Rongtao, Noble Stephanie, Scheinost Dustin
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Yale University, New Haven, United States.
Department of Radiology & Biomedical Imaging, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, United States.
Elife. 2025 May 14;12:RP88540. doi: 10.7554/eLife.88540.
Citation metrics influence academic reputation and career trajectories. Recent works have highlighted flaws in citation practices in the Neurosciences, such as the under-citation of women. However, self-citation rates-or how much authors cite themselves-have not yet been comprehensively investigated in the Neurosciences. This work characterizes self-citation rates in basic, translational, and clinical Neuroscience literature by collating 100,347 articles from 63 journals between the years 2000-2020. In analyzing over five million citations, we demonstrate four key findings: (1) increasing self-citation rates of Last Authors relative to First Authors, (2) lower self-citation rates in low- and middle-income countries, (3) gender differences in self-citation stemming from differences in the number of previously published papers, and (4) variations in self-citation rates by field. Our characterization of self-citation provides insight into citation practices that shape the perceived influence of authors in the Neurosciences, which in turn may impact what type of scientific research is done and who gets the opportunity to do it.
引文指标影响学术声誉和职业发展轨迹。近期的研究凸显了神经科学领域引文实践中的缺陷，比如对女性的引用不足。然而，自我引用率——即作者自我引用的程度——在神经科学领域尚未得到全面研究。这项研究通过整理2000年至2020年间63种期刊的100347篇文章，对基础、转化和临床神经科学文献中的自我引用率进行了特征描述。在分析了超过500万次引用后，我们得出了四个关键发现：（1）最后作者相对于第一作者的自我引用率在上升；（2）低收入和中等收入国家的自我引用率较低；（3）自我引用方面的性别差异源于此前发表论文数量的不同；（4）各领域的自我引用率存在差异。我们对自我引用的特征描述有助于深入了解那些塑造神经科学领域作者影响力认知的引文实践，进而可能影响所开展的科研类型以及谁有机会开展此类研究。
