Abstract
Background: Author and journal self-citation contributes to the overall citation count of an article and the impact factor (IF) of the journal in which it appears. However, little is known about the extent of self-citation in the general clinical medicine literature. This study aimed to determine the effect of self-citation (journal and author) on the IF of Iranian, American, and European English medical journals. Materials and Methods: IF, IF without self-citations (corrected IF), journal self-citation rate, and author self-citation rate for medical journals were investigated from 2014–2021 by reviewing the Journal Citation Report (JCR). Twenty Iranian medical journals (published in English) in the web of science indexed were selected and compared with 20 American and 20 European medical journals. The correlation between the journal self-citation and author self-citation with IF was obtained. We used Spearman’s correlation coefficient for the correlation of self-citation and IF. Results: The overall journal citations were higher in the American and European journals compared to the Iranian ones between 2014 and 2021. There was a significant relationship between journal self-citation rates and IF (P<0.001). The findings demonstrated that the rate of author self-citation was higher in the European and American journals compared to the Iranian ones. Findings also showed a significant difference between the author's self-citation and IF in Iranian, American, and European medical journals that published in English (P<0.001). Conclusions: The self-citation rate positively affects the IF in medical journals. A high concentration of self-citation of some journals could distort the ranking among medical surgery journals in general.
 [GMJ.2021;10:e2156]
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