Effect of Self-Citation on the H-Index of Faculty Members of the Top 5 Engineering Universities in Iran

Self-citation occurs when the author cites his/her own previous scientific works. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of self-citation on the H- index of faculty members of the top 5 engineering universities in Iran based on the Scopus database.

This applied study was conducted using scientometric method. The statistical population was 303 faculty members of universities (Sharif, Amirkabir University of Technology, Isfahan University of Technology, Iran University of Science & Technology, Babol Noshirvani University of Technology) with an H-index of more than 20 in the Scopus during 2015-2019. The data were analyzed in Excel and SPSS-19, and the Spearman correlation test was applied to determine the relationship between the variables.

The results showed that the faculty members of mechanics, materials and chemical engineering had the highest index with 1376, 1248 and 1176 articles before the removal of self-citation, respectively. Moreover, after the removal of self-citation, the mentioned fields of study had a high H-index with 1271, 1183 and 1087 articles, respectively. After removing the self-citation of the chemistry field with a decrease of 112 units, the most and least change was related to the field of architecture with a decrease of 2 units in the H-index; the highest and lowest impacts of the H-index after removing the citations were related to Noshirvani University and Sharif University, respectively. In addition, it was found there was a significant relationship between the self-citation of the faculty members and the number of articles in the study population.

The results of the study indicated that self-citation in Sharif University and Babol Noshirvani University of Technology had the least and most impact on the H-index of faculty members.