Abstract
The increasing influence of publishers on academic publishing has inevitably promoted studies of publisher citation and self-citation. However, in this type of citation analysis, it is difficult to integrate size dependence and independence among multiple citations and citing articles. We conducted a comprehensive and global study on citation and self-citation at the publisher level and examine the determinants of their different components. Obvious skewness exists in self-citation and citation of the top 20 journal publishers in essential science indicators. Publisher citation significantly correlates with publisher self-citation (PSC) excluding journal self-citation (JSC). Regarding the top 20 journal publishers, we reveal dependency relations of various citations from self-citation to citation and between intradisciplinary and interdisciplinary. JSC integrates with proportion (number), discipline and topic profiles of publisher’s articles and number of publisher’s journals to influence PSC excluding JSC. After exceeding an inflection point related to the JSC rate, the increase in the proportion of articles will become positive for intradisciplinary PSC excluding JSC. Namely, when the JSC rate of a publisher exceeds a value related to its proportion of articles, the increase in its JSC will decrease its intradisciplinary PSC excluding JSC. The increase in the unevenness of the discipline profile of articles can decrease the value of the inflection point and strengthen the effectiveness of the proportion of articles after exceeding the inflection point. In contrast, the increase in the unevenness of the topic profile of articles can increase intradisciplinary PSC excluding JSC regardless of the number of articles. Interdisciplinary PSC is mainly determined by the number of articles. The decrease in the number of journals, from the top 10 to the top 11–20 journal publishers, increases the self-citations in transition statuses between intradisciplinary and interdisciplinary by strengthening the effectiveness of JSC and the number of articles. The topic profile of articles can also directly influence non-self-citation.
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Data availability
The datasets generated during the current study are available at https://github.com/zhouyp97/PSC-PC-Top.
Code availability
Full source code is available. The execution file is available at https://github.com/zhouyp97/PSC-PC-Top together with its guidance and input files.
Abbreviations
- \(\beta_{JR}\) :
-
Ratio coefficient of journal self-citation to intradisciplinary publisher self-citation excluding journal self-citation
- \(b\) :
-
Average references of articles
- \(b_{E}\) :
-
Ratio of interdisciplinary references to all references of articles
- \(b_{R}\) :
-
Ratio of intradisciplinary references to all references of articles, valued at \(1 - b_{E}\)
- \(b_{E,k,l}\) :
-
Average interdisciplinary references of articles in the kth Web of Science category (cited articles published in all years and citing articles from the lth year)
- \(b_{R,k,l}\) :
-
Average intradisciplinary references of articles in the kth Web of Science category (cited articles published in all years and citing articles from the lth year)
- \(C_{EN}\) :
-
Interdisciplinary non-publisher self-citation of a publisher
- \(C_{ES}\) :
-
Interdisciplinary publisher self-citation of a publisher
- \(C_{g}\) :
-
Number of articles citing the gth journal of a publisher
- \(C_{i,j}\) :
-
Number of articles citing the articles in the jth subset of the ith group of a publisher
- \(C_{RS}\) :
-
Intradisciplinary publisher self-citation of a publisher
- \(C_{RN}\) :
-
Intradisciplinary non-publisher self-citation of a publisher
- \(f_{A}\) :
-
Proportion of a publisher’s articles
- \(f_{DP}\) :
-
Discipline profile factor of a publisher’s articles
- \(f_{EN}\) :
-
Adjusted coefficient of interdisciplinary non-publisher self-citation of a publisher
- \(f_{ES}\) :
-
Adjusted coefficient of interdisciplinary publisher self-citation of a publisher
- \(f_{N}\) :
-
Adjusted coefficient of non-publisher self-citation of a publisher
- \(f_{RN}\) :
-
Adjusted coefficient of intradisciplinary non-publisher self-citation of a publisher
- \(f_{RS}\) :
-
Adjusted coefficient of intradisciplinary publisher self-citation of a publisher
- \(f_{13}\) :
-
Coefficient to adjust interdisciplinary publisher self-citation for publisher Karger, valued at 0.25
- \(f_{18}\) :
-
Coefficient to adjust intradisciplinary publisher self-citation for publisher APA, valued at 6
- \(g\) :
-
Serial number of a journal of a publisher
- \(h\) :
-
Number of journals of a publisher
- \(i\) :
-
Serial number of an article group of a publisher
- \(j\) :
-
Serial number of an article subset in an article group of a publisher
- \(J_{k,l}\) :
-
Average number of the journals’ articles in the kth WoSC published by a publisher in the lth year
- \(k\) :
-
Serial number of a Web of Science category
- \(l\) :
-
Published year of citing articles, valued at 2016–2019 (cited articles in 2016), 2017–2020 (cited articles in 2017) or 2018–2021 (cited articles in 2018)
- \(m\) :
-
Number of article subsets in the ith article group of a publisher
- \(n\) :
-
Number of article groups of a publisher
- \(p_{ES,k,l}\) :
-
Ratio of interdisciplinary publisher self-citation to interdisciplinary citation (cited articles in the kth Web of Science category published by a publisher and citing articles from the lth year)
- \(p_{RS,k,l}\) :
-
Ratio of intradisciplinary publisher self-citation to intradisciplinary citation (cited articles in the kth Web of Science category published by a publisher and citing articles from the lth year)
- \(P_{k,l}\) :
-
Number of articles in the kth Web of Science category published in the lth year
- \(P_{l}\) :
-
Number of articles published in the lth year
- \(q\) :
-
Number of web of science categories
- \(r_{E,k,l}\) :
-
Ratio of interdisciplinary citations for articles in a year to all interdisciplinary citations (cited articles in the kth Web of Science category and citing articles from the lth year)
- \(r_{R,k,l}\) :
-
Ratio of intradisciplinary citations for articles in a year to all intradisciplinary citations (cited articles in the kth Web of Science category and citing articles from the lth year)
- \(r_{l}\) :
-
Ratio of citations from the lth year to all citations
- SC i,j :
-
Number of publisher self-citing articles of a publisher citing the articles in the jth subset of the ith group
- \(SC_{g}\) :
-
Number of journal self-citing articles citing the gth journal of a publisher
- \(SP_{i}\) :
-
Number of articles in the ith article group of a publisher
- \(SP_{i,j}\) :
-
Number of articles in the jth subset of the ith group of a publisher
- \(SP_{l}\) :
-
Number of articles published in the lth year by a publisher
- \(SP_{k,l}\) :
-
Number of articles in the kth Web of Science category published in the lth year by a publisher
- \(SP_{k}\) :
-
Number of cited articles in the kth Web of Science category published by a publisher
- \(SP_{j,k}\) :
-
Number of articles in the jth subset of a publisher in the kth Web of Science category
- \(T_{g}\) :
-
Times cited of articles in the gth journal of a publisher
- T i,j :
-
Times cited of articles in the jth subset of the ith group of a publisher
- \(T_{i,j,l}\) :
-
Times cited of articles in the jth subset of the ith group of a publisher by articles published in the lth year
- \(\tau_{J}\) :
-
Journal ratio of times cited to citing articles of a publisher
- \(\tau_{S}\) :
-
Subset ratio of times cited to citing articles of a publisher
- \(x_{R}\) :
-
Ratio of intradisciplinary publisher self-citation to non-publisher self-citation of a publisher
- \(x_{E}\) :
-
Ratio of interdisciplinary publisher self-citation to non-publisher self-citation of a publisher
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Acknowledgements
This work is funded by the National Major Science and Technology Projects of China (ZX069). I am grateful to Fei Yao (Graduate School, Tsinghua University) for providing suggestions for this study. I thank the reviewers for their valuable comments.
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National Major Science and Technology Projects of China (ZX069).
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Zhou, Y. Self-citation and citation of top journal publishers and their interpretation in the journal-discipline context. Scientometrics 126, 6013–6040 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-03995-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-03995-y