An Investigation of Author Self-Citation Impact on Ranking the Southwest Asian Countries on the Basis of Citation per Paper

According to the Twenty-Year Vision Plan of the Islamic Republic of Iran, it is predicted that Iran will be in the first place in producing science and technology among Southwest Asian countries in 1404.Therefore, in this study self-citation impact on the ranking of 26 countries of the Southwest Asia region in the field of zoonosesis is investigated on the basis of the data of WOS. In this study scientometrics and citation analysis methods have been used. The zoonotic keywords in the fields of title and topic have been searched, and their results have been combined separately with each of the target countries. All of the analyses have been performed on the basis of the results of these searches that include 19205 articles. The main objective of this study is to investigate the influence of author self-citation on the ranking of the countries considered in 1404 Vision Plan on the basis of average citation per paper. According to the number of articles, Turkey, Israel and Iran respectively with 8397, 5595 and 3807 articles were the most prolific countries. Based on the average citation per paper, Azerbaijan, Israel and Palestine with 30.83, 18.96 and 12.14 respectively gained the first 3 ranks. Based on the rate of self-citation, Iran, Tajikistan and Turkey with 22.92, 20.51 and 19.85 respectively had the most rate of self-citation. According to the average citation per paper excluding self-citation, Azerbaijan, Israel and Palestine with 30.45, 17.21 and 12 respectively have had the three first places. Iran’s rank was relatively well in terms of number of papers in the region. But, in spite of the significant increase in the number of Iranian articles in recent years, Iran still doesnt have a proper position. Approximately, Iran’s rank is almost always lower than the other countries on the basis of average citations per paper. Most of the countries that don’t have a good position based on the average citations per paper have high self-citation rate. But the rank of some of the countries, including Iran did not change before and after the removal of self-citation. Thus, self-citation isn’t a good way to improve the position of Iran on the basis of average citation per paper. Countries including Iran that are not in a good condition in terms of average citations per paper, are proposed to publish their papers in journals with higher impact factors in order to increase their citation per paper, instead of more self-citation.