Coercive Self-Citation: Uncomfortably Common

A Policy Forum piece in Science by Wilhite and Fong explores the incidence of editorial coercive citation using a survey of ~6700 researchers.  Authors in economics, sociology, psychology, and business were surveyed and 832 related journals were examined. Their definition of coercive self-citation is when editors "(i) give no indication that the manuscript was lacking in attribution; (ii) make no suggestion as to specific articles, authors, or a body of work requiring review; and (iii) only guide authors to add citations from the editor's journal."

They found that 175 journals were called coercers with one journal being named 49 times. Since the mean submission rate per journal was 55 articles, some journals appear to coercer most authors. Importantly, they found that 64% were less likely to submit to a journal if coerced but sadly, 57% would add "superfluous citations" prior to submitting a manuscript to a known coercer. Only seven percent of authors would refuse to add citations if coerced.

They then looked at "risk-factors" for coercion using regression analysis and found that researchers of more junior rank were more likely to be coerced compared to full professors. In conclusion, they suggest that something needs to be done, but not many options for intervention are available. Enough for now but it's worth a read.

Source: Allen Wilhite and Eric Fong, Science 3 Feb 2012 (335) 542-3.

h/t Preeti Malani