Self‐citation rates of scientific and technical journals in SCI from China, Japan, India, and Korea

ABSTRACTWe analyze the self‐citation rates of scientific and technical journals in the SCI database from China, Japan, India, and Korea from 2007 to 2009. Korea has the highest self‐citation rate, Japan the lowest. Compared with 2007, the overall level of self‐citation rate declined across all four countries in 2008. In 2009, however, the self‐citation rate of the three countries other than China rose a little. The total cited frequency and impact factor of excessive self‐citing journals and zero self‐citation journal in China, Japan, India, and Korea are all lower than those of the mean of all journals included in the SCI in 2009. It appears that the academic influence of journals whose self‐citation rates is either too low or too high is small.