Hartley J. On the need to distinguish betwen author and journal self-citations.
Scientometrics 2009;81(3):787-788.
Prof. James Hartley, on this ‘letter to the Editor’, with regard to his book on Academic Writing & Publishing tries to make clear the ambiguity of a term he used to indicate those concurring elements that, put together, determine the impact factor of a journal. By reading a recent article – by Loet Leydesdorff – on the subject, he found out that what himself meant by “self-citation” was interpreted not as the “authors (who) cites their own works” instead as “journal self-citation”. Different usages of the term are shown on a table taken from Google Scholars. A problem of interpretation arises.
