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Two large scholarly publishers of open-access analysis—which means free to learn outdoors a paywall—have been accused of excessively citing papers beforehand printed in their very own journals.
A examine printed in Might earlier than peer evaluation on the preprint server SocArXiv suggests that prime self-citation charges might have inflated the journal influence issue (JIF) of titles printed by MDPI and Frontiers lately.
The examine authors investigated the quotation patterns of 8,360 journals printed by 20 of the most important for-profit educational publishers from 1997 to 2021. They discovered that papers printed by Frontiers and MDPI titles include extra self-citation than different publishers’ journals do.
Citations are essential in academia as a result of they’re used to calculate metrics just like the JIF, which is usually incorrectly used to evaluate researchers and their work.
“The propensity to self-cite is fairly related amongst all journals from all publishers besides Frontiers and MDPI, that are two clear outliers,” says examine coauthor Marco Seeber, a sociologist and public coverage professor on the College of Agder. He notes that self-citation to research printed within the earlier 5 calendar years, that are used to calculate the JIF, are notably excessive.
It “is tough to elucidate a focus of citations inside this window and throughout a writer aside from by means of manipulation,” says Matt Hodgkinson, a analysis integrity specialist and a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics who was not concerned with the brand new examine. “Clearly, perverse incentives are affecting quotation conduct at a big scale,” he says, including that the examine is “effectively conceived and complicated.”
Seeber’s earlier analysis prompt that researchers in a dozen international locations are citing their very own papers at an unusually excessive price, a phenomenon that he and his colleagues attributed to insurance policies inside these nations that incentivize such quotation practices. In 2018, they reported that researchers in Italy elevated their self-citation charges after a controversial 2010 regulation got here into impact that required teachers to fulfill sure productiveness thresholds to be eligible for promotions.
Editors have been accused previously of asking authors so as to add citations to beforehand printed papers to artificially enhance their journals’ quotation metrics.
“Publishers and editors must not ever require or routinely ‘counsel’ that authors cite their journals so that their articles be accepted,” Hodgkinson says. “[Even] if it had been authors attempting to curry favor and enhance the [JIF] of their goal journal, or editors going rogue, publishers nonetheless have a accountability to supervise processes to make sure citations should not being manipulated.”
For him, it’s essential that every one citation-based metrics disregard or explicitly modify for self-citation, whether or not it’s by establishment, editor, journal, or writer. “Apart from highlighting and policing quotation manipulation, the broader resolution is to cease evaluating authors and establishments based mostly on the influence issue of the journals they publish in,” he says.
Giulia Stefenelli, chair of MDPI’s scientific board, says in an e-mail that the writer maintains a clear coverage on self-citation. “Any recognized quotation manipulation is carefully monitored, and authors and reviewers are required to stick to strict tips. Reviewers and educational editors are answerable for verifying the relevance of citations. MDPI doesn’t, at any time, encourage the addition of journal citations to any article, as this is able to be unethical.”
A spokesperson for Frontiers says in an e-mail that the examine makes use of “unnecessarily convoluted methodology” to calculate self-citations and conflates the expansion of publication output with self-citation. Our “Analysis Integrity Workforce has applied particular checks to systematically monitor for unethical quotation practices. Simply as for all critical infringements, any reviewer or editor caught trying such exercise is topic to fast dismissal,” the spokesperson says.
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