Investigation of citation behavior in faculty members of Yazd University of Medical Sciences

It is obvious that authors cite documents that are relevant to their topic, which provide useful background for their research. The purpose of this study is to investigate citation behavior among faculty members of Yazd University of Medical Sciences about papers published in Persian by the university. The descriptive study was carried out on 410 articles published with the name of at least one faculty member that indexed in four Yazd Medical University journals in Persian. The data contained in the first and references pages were collected by a valid checklist and were analyzed by Excel 2007. Most authors were male (80.76%). 410 articles were examined in this study, had 8781 citations and only (1.2%) were self-citations. The percentage of citations made referred to journal articles and books were 82.1%, 9.5% respectively. 8.4% others made to other documents. Only 15.68% of the articles were in Persian. 65 authors had 107 cited themselves. The maximum percentage (83.12 %) of self-citations was author self-citations, followed by 16.8% journal self-citations. It is clear that citation to Latin journals is significant among faculty members of Yazd University of Medical Sciences and reveals that the authors of the university do not have the tendency to cite themselves.